From Off-Grid to On-Road: M-KOPA Explores Battery Analytics
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.
“The relationship between our involvement in the Efficiency for Access R&D fund and Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Project has been symbiotic. The R&D fund served as the initial launching pad to explore battery performance, while Global LEAP enabled us to connect it with e-waste mitigation. Across both projects, we sought to understand the potential of harnessing analytics for more complex off-grid batteries to be more conscious in our battery management sourcing and, subsequently, end of life management,” — Katherine Owens, Head of R&D and Impact, M-KOPA
M-KOPA came to market in 2010 with the seed of an idea drawn out on a whiteboard. Back then, the founders had the idea of making financing more accessible by combining the power of digital micropayments with Internet-of-Things (IoT) connectivity; this innovation could then enable flexible repayment for assets otherwise out of reach for customers. And so it was that Pay-as-you-Go (PayGo) solar was borne.
Since pioneering the PayGo model, M-KOPA has since expanded to five global offices, with over 1,500 employees and 1.5 million customers. To date, 3.7 million individuals have swapped kerosene lanterns for clean, PayGo solar home systems, enabling $467 million in cumulative savings and preventing 2 million tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
On top of the manifold social impacts M-KOPA creates for customers, the company is aware of the potential externalities of distributing batteries at scale along the last mile, namely electronic waste, or e-waste.
Even before their involvement in the Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Challenge, the company was leveraging circular economy principles to reduce its environmental footprint. A key part of this strategy was designing efficient reverse logistics to collect, repair and refurbish e-components from customers. Through these efforts, nearly 90% of product returns are refurbished, meaning products are restored to a working state and placed back on the market so customers can access swap parts, if needed. The remainder go to local e-waste management companies that recycle e-waste safely.
Importantly, by refurbishing systems for a second-life, M-KOPA gives very low-income customers a chance to step onto the PayGo pathway by owning a lower-priced product to build a credit history, a process that empowers customers to access other services and products.
Their investment in the circular economy, and application for the Solar E-Waste Challenge more specifically, is a direct response to the company’s ultimate desire to create the best product experience for customers.
Delivering High Quality Customer Service as the Impetus for Innovation
“E-waste is not just about disposal,” says Katherine Owens, Head of R&D and Impact at M-KOPA. “It’s about making sure there’s a reduction in premature disposal and keeping valuable materials within supply chains.”
Battery management systems (BMS) are core to this thesis. A BMS gives engineers and technicians a view of how each cell in the battery pack is working — a crucial examination, as a pack is only as strong as its weakest link. For example, if a customer calls Customer Care and reports a problem with their solar system, technicians can check the system and confirm whether the fault lies with the battery, the most critical component of the system. If not, the agent can guide the customer to amend the system without needing to travel a far distance for a repair or swap. This clarity represents a step change in service quality and delivery for customers.
A well-designed BMS can also help M-KOPA understand real operational needs, allowing the company to assess which battery brands aren’t reaching their expected lifespan. All to say, a BMS has the potential to lift a data veil on how batteries perform once at customers’ homes, which can create a virtuous cycle of better product design as performance data rolls in.
Efficiency for Access R&D Awardee to Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Challenge Finalist
Before their involvement in the Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Challenge, M-KOPA partnered with the Efficiency for Access Research and Development (R&D) Fund to take the first step in proving the feasibility of integrating smart controls onto large off-grid solar batteries.
The primary objective of this project was to design a prototype smart battery pack that could be integrated into large off-grid solar systems and convey readings on current, voltage, temperature, depths of discharge, safety protection and cell balancing six times faster than before.
This R&D project served as a blueprint and foundation for the next step in the research and design journey as a participant in the Global LEAP Solar E-Waste Challenge. Participation in the two schemes has helped M-KOPA gather momentum to develop informative battery analytics and investigate smart batteries for specific energy applications.
“The R&D Fund was the launching pad for exploring this area of e-waste. By participating across the two schemes, there seems to be a one plus one equals three effect.”
Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Challenge
Through the Solar E-Waste Challenge, M-KOPA is going further with its testing of a smart BMS for off-grid use, specifically to validate the degree to which the BMS can reliably predict battery health and reduce battery failure and degradation, thus mitigating instances of prematurely sending e-waste to downstream disposal partners and saving customers time and money in the process.
Moreover, the project explores how batteries may fare in warmer climates, too. Climate, particularly heat, is the most influential external factor affecting battery behavior and life. As M-KOPA entered the West Africa region, its engineers and product designers had a blank page as to how M-KOPA’s batteries would perform in Nigeria’s hot temperatures, which can be controlled for in a dedicated testing facility.
Next Steps
As M-KOPA pushes their technological innovations forward, they are taking some of their early learnings and preliminary knowledge and applying them beyond off-grid appliances. A nascent electric motorbike sector is emerging in East Africa and promises to grow in the coming years as the world pivots toward electric vehicles.
M-KOPA hopes to translate their findings on smart BMSs to electric vehicles. In the same way that M-KOPA’s curiosity and passion instigated exploration of a fit-for-purpose BMS, the company is now applying similar questions to e-mobility — how do you design a reliable product that promises long-life and good quality for customers? How can you simultaneously offer the most affordable product to enable customers to improve their livelihoods? The answer is, better battery analytics.
This article is part of a series of Spotlight Articles on the four Global LEAP Awards Solar E-Waste Challenge finalists. Learn more about the Challenge.
