Designing and Optimizing Second-Life E-Waste Batteries in Burkina Faso and Benin
The Global LEAP Awards are an international competition to identify and promote the world’s best, most energy-efficient off-grid appliances. The Solar E-Waste Challenge was launched in 2019, with an aim to identify innovations in solar e-waste management across sub-Saharan Africa. Now in its second round, the Solar E-Waste Challenge strengthens its objective to accelerate the provision of sustainable e-waste management. Through a rigorous evaluation process, the competition selected four winners spanning five countries to implement projects in extended product lifespan, enhanced reparability and refurbishment and battery technology. This blog series explores solar e-waste ecosystems and provides insights into each company’s unique challenges and opportunities.
“It was logical that Lagazel take into account end-of-life of products to [align with our] social and environmental goals. Our mission is both economic and social. We wanted to develop the local economy but do so with environmental principles.” — Claire Le Ster, Business, Marketing and Communication Manager at Lagazel
Although Lagazel was officially founded in 2015 by brothers Arnaud and Maxence Chabanne, its earliest roots were established in 2000, when Arnaud Chabanne started an initiative in Burkina Faso to transform oil lamps into solar lanterns. Starting locally in Dédougou, he replaced and sold several thousand solar lamps, expanding clean energy access at a time when the sector was still in its early stages.
Then in 2015, with the idea of creating a company that could implement local production of high-quality, environmentally-friendly solar products, the two brothers decided to join forces to create Lagazel. With headquarters in France, Lagazel became the first company to industrialize the manufacture of solar lamps in Africa. Lagazel now has two production facilities: one in Burkina Faso and another more recently established one in Benin.
From a seedling idea to a fully functioning company, Lagazel offers portable solar lamps, kits and stations that are accessible for a wide range of populations and circumstances. As of the end of 2020, Lagazel’s efforts have expanded access to quality lighting to 232,734 beneficiaries, allowing them to study and work in safer and better conditions.
A Nascent E-Waste Ecosystem
As Lagazel has grown over the past few years in parallel with the blossoming off-grid solar sector, it became increasingly clear to its founders that a gap in e-waste initiatives was in urgent need of innovative solutions, and so Lagazel began to discuss what those solutions could look like in conjunction with their manufacturing efforts.
Like many countries across sub-Saharan Africa, e-waste initiatives that respond sufficiently to the sector’s expanding needs remain limited in Burkina Faso. Before Lagazel began to seriously consider e-waste recycling and refurbishing, they knew about only one other company in the e-waste landscape in the country: Les Ateliers du Bocage (now Association burkinabè pour la promotion des emplois verts), a French company that recycles electronic products. In collaboration with the French telecommunication company Orange and Emmaüs International, Ateliers du Bocage had set up a project to collect and recycle mobile phones. Yet while these e-waste projects were scattered across Burkina Faso, there were few, if any, that focused on solar e-waste. At the time, public and institutional awareness on e-waste was still limited — a problem that continues to persist in the region.
“About e-waste, the level of awareness is low in Burkina Faso. Even when the product doesn’t work, people still feel that they own the product, so they prefer to keep the product at home instead of giving it back for collection and recycling,” said Claire.
However, in 2020, the National Agency for Rural Electrification and Energy Efficiency conducted a study on the solar e-waste sector to evaluate the amount of solar panels and batteries that would reach end-of-life in the coming years, should efforts not accelerate. They found that the quantity of panels increased from 113 tons in 2010 to 18,199 tons in 2018. By analyzing generated waste from the past decade, they were able to project the amount of waste that would need to be treated in the future.
These findings indicate that the issue must be addressed now in order to prevent even worse consequences in the future. By focusing on the development of upstream and downstream value chains for different technology components, this study was a catalyst for the Ministry to take action and plan initiatives that address the growing e-waste problem.
Global LEAP E-Waste Challenge
Lagazel’s Global LEAP E-waste project ultimately aims to reduce e-waste from solar products by offering second-life battery packs at an affordable price. Additionally, since most used lithium-ion batteries have to be exported overseas (typically to Europe) to be recycled, Lagazel’s project limits these exports by focusing on local production and handling, thereby reducing extra costs.
In order to ensure local job creation and economic growth — a central tenet to the company’s mission — Lagazel trains regional personnel in all aspects of its after-sale service for clients, including battery replacements. Using cells they’ve obtained from stockpiles of lithium-ion batteries discarded by the off-grid solar sector, Lagazel refurbishes a battery pack and replaces customers’ batteries. Working with a local production team, they turn end-of-life batteries into second-life battery packs that can be switched out of any brand of solar product.
Lagazel’s Global LEAP Solar E-Waste project aims to adapt battery management system (BMS) innovative technology for the off-grid solar sector, optimizing cell usage and service continuity despite failed cells. So far, they have produced four prototypes of second-life batteries with the BMS integrated, and are currently in the process of testing the prototypes for different performance parameters such as capacity and voltage evolution.
In the next phase of their project, Lagazel will use their battery technology to pilot 1000 collected cylindrical batteries. They’ve already begun to collect batteries from partners across Africa as well as Europe, and will continue to accelerate the process in the coming months.
Challenges as Growth Opportunities
While the project’s objectives have remained the same, the project has nonetheless encountered some issues along the way, with the COVID-19 pandemic contributing to some of those surprises.
For security reasons, for example, Lagazel had to construct a new building at their Burkina Faso location that could house their battery refurbishing activities separately from their product manufacturing efforts.
One of the main hurdles Lagazel has faced, however, has been a transportation issue. In order to get enough volumes of e-waste to test and develop new technology from, Lagazel has had to import e-waste from countries like Mali and Togo. But as it has globally for the past year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic posed some major challenges. With borders tightened and movement of supplies restricted, Lagazel struggled to carry e-waste through customs, an already difficult product to transport under normal circumstances. Despite these unexpected setbacks, however, Lagazel has continued on track to realize its project objectives.
“The Global LEAP Awards was the starting point when we said that we would start concrete activities. Global LEAP has helped us formalize and communicate about the project. We can more easily communicate with partners and ask them to collect their batteries. We can [also] ask for government support for our projects. We couldn’t start with new activities in the e-waste sector without support because we wouldn’t be able to fund it by ourselves,” Claire reflects.
With Global LEAP funding, Lagazel has been able to recruit additional staff to the project, which has in turn helped accelerate the project timeline. Funding has also enabled Lagazel to ship products back to France for testing, an expense that would otherwise be too costly.
Partnerships and the Future of E-Waste
As the project has taken root, Lagazel now has the freedom to consider and pursue further collaboration and expansion.
“We’re starting to implement a committee of [off-grid solar sector] companies who are interested in the topic. We want to gather these people around our initiatives because we need batteries and other end-of-life practices to conduct our activities, so we offer to collect their batteries. We cannot do the work alone. We need to gather all players in the field to be able to reach some impact,” said Claire.
Beyond the Global LEAP Awards timeline, Lagazel will continue to push their solar e-waste project forward, with a newly-signed two-year funding agreement with the French Ministry of Economy, Finance and Recovery. They are also engaged in a partnership with the Burkinabe National Agency (ANEREE) to establish a dedicated cylindrical battery recycling and refurbishment facility based in Burkina Faso.
This article is part of a series of Spotlight Articles on the four Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Challenge finalists. The remaining articles will be published in the coming months as the Challenge wraps up by March 2022. Learn more about the Challenge.
