Solar Jobs & Energy - Village Minigrids in Lesotho

Hi Everyone - I just wanted to share excerpts from a letter to our dedicated staff in Lesotho and express gratitude for all the support that enabled us to make 2018 our best year yet!

Dear 1PWR team,

Happy holidays and seasons greetings! I hope you are all relaxing with family and friends, enjoying the time off and recharging batteries for an exciting 2019 ahead.

Looking back, we came a long way in 2018 and I wanted to share a few highlights of what we achieved due to your hard work and perseverance:

• Initialed Power Purchase Agreement with LEC – this moment in June represented the culmination of a process that started way back in late 2015 when a freshly incorporated 1PWR submitted an expression of interest to bid on Lesotho’s first solar Independent Power Producer tender, which we named "Neo 1."           Although 1PWR consortium became the “preferred bidder” back in 2017, the PPA initialing was the point where we locked in the deal with LEC, after more than a year of negotiations and navigating countless hurdles. The PPA is not the end of the story – before attracting the debt finance for the Neo 1 project we still need to negotiate a “support agreement” with the Finance Ministry (detailing the government’s position on issues of taxation, expropriation, and guarantee of LEC obligations under the PPA), but initialing the PPA was a major milestone that cemented the credibility of the Neo 1 proponents.

• Neo 1 Joint Development Agreement with Scatec Solar and Norfund – once the PPA was initialed we were able to satisfy the conditions of the JDA with the equity financiers for the Neo 1 project. In practice what this meant was that after several lean years 1PWR could start getting paid by its partners for developing Neo 1 and with these cash flows we began to chart a course towards stabilizing our finances.

• EU ElectriFI co-financed minigrid feasibility study – as I write this the consultants from Cadmus, Black & Veatch, INR, and Generate Advisory are submitting the final deliverables under the feasibility study kicked off earlier this year. This study was a condition of the REPP loan but most importantly it showed that our approach is fundamentally sound and the minigrids project is feasible and financeable.           In the process of engaging with the consultants we learned a lot (in technical and environmental and social aspects especially) and improved how we implement and organize ourselves.

• Commissioning of the Ha Makebe pilot microgrid – live testing at Ha Makebe demonstrated that we could generate and distribute electricity from a solar power station and wire network designed and built by 1PWR. Testing of the Iometer smart meter and M-Pesa payment process validated that we could close the loop on prepaid transactions, which is core to the business model of a minigrid. 1PWR is a team with a deep technical capacity and the “Beta” pilot at Ha Makebe vividly showcases, more than any proposal or presentation could, our commitment and ability to solve tough engineering challenges in the pursuit of rural electrification.

• 1PWR Smart Meter v1.0 – in mid 2018 the first prototype “Kinzer” meters rolled off the “production line” and were installed as power monitors to feed data into our uGrid system design process; this marked the first step towards an in-house solution for metering and payment linked to a 1PWR customer transaction database.

• LNDC factory lease agreement – After 10 years of incubation at Appropriate Technology Services in Khubetsoana STG/1PWR said goodbye to our hosts with a braai in December 2018. Earlier in August 1PWR signed an agreement with LNDC to rent 1000m² of factory and office space in Ha Thetsane, which will become 1PWR’s new headquarters and production facility when we move in early 2019 following renovations.

• Inaugural class of Energy Access Fellows – our first experiment with this program has been a boon to 1PWR and endeavors to provide a fulfilling growth experience for the fellows. Fellows have worked in various roles throughout the organization to “up our game” in financial management, environmental and social engagement, data processing, engineering design, and hardware and software development, and we look forwards to keeping in touch with our “alumni” and augmenting our team with new fellows goings forwards.

The list could go on and on: from the little ways we improved our administrative processes to running a major tender process for disbursement of AfDB funds, we checked off tasks large and small from our to do list. We wrote countless letters, SOPs and contracts; developed tablet apps to digitize our site surveys; crafted a new website (going live soon!), ported legacy uGrid code into the latest Python build, negotiated a compensation package with Neo 1 landowners in Mafeteng; developed blueprints for an IEC compliant PV tracker design; and throughout everything tirelessly lobbied the Lesotho government to buy into our initiatives – and so on and so forth! All year long there were battles to be fought and problems to be solved, and we survived and thrived because you all rose to the challenge.

It was never easy and let’s be honest - 2019 won’t be easy either, but I am confident that the list of achievements we look back on a year from now will be every bit as impressive as what you made happen in 2018.  As long as we continue to believe in ourselves and each other, this team can realize our shared dream of bringing solar electricity to rural communities, starting in 2019 in Lesotho and pioneering new regions for decades to come.

Wishing you all a happy new year in 2019!  Best,

Matt

Hello again to everyone,

Summer is nearly upon us in Lesotho, and our team is excited to share a bit about the work they've been doing with the communities here in Lesotho.

Much of our work over the past few months has been critical communication and learning from the communities where we work.  This is an important part of the 20MW project - making sure we understand how the project will affect people's lives and livelihoods, and if necessary updating the project design to make sure the impacts of the project are as positive as possible.  It is also a critical step in the design of community minigrids - understanding how much power people might need, how much they can afford, and how many buildings in each village should be connected.  At this juncture our team has become expert at the process - one of our fellows this year even designed a custom tablet-based app for our team so that the process of data collection and of data sharing can be more efficient!  It was very exciting to see that come online.

One other piece of exciting news is that we have just signed a lease with the Lesotho National Development Corporation (LNDC) for a manufacturing space where we will be able to actually build solar energy hardware in Lesotho and at the volumes needed for all of the community systems we hope to be building.  We still have a few months of renovations before we'll be able to move in and get that space up to speed, but I am looking forward to sharing more pictures when that happens!

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season.

-Matt

Hello again to all of you,

I am writing this month with some very exciting news - for us as an organization but also for Lesotho as a whole! 

Since my last update we have been busy with quite a lot of "behind the scenes" work, the tough negotiations and contracting that will put financing in place to make projects happen.  I am very proud to say that the results of this is, first and foremost, two huge steps forward on the solar photovoltaic power plant (named "Neo 1" - in Sesotho "Neo" means "gift").  One of these is an initialed agreement with the Lesotho Electricity Company, guaranteeing that they will purchase all electricity we generate -- this is needed for any investors (or banks) to feel secure in putting their money behind the project.  (You'll see the "signing ceremony" in the photos!) The second is a completed agreement with two Norweigan groups to Jointly Develop the plant -- i.e., they are bringing both private equity funds and engineering expertise to join the team and make this project a reality.

The ink is still just drying on these agreements, but our team is already hard at work... next steps relate to working with the neighboring community to secure land rights, conducting environmental safety assessments, and securing the necessary permitting from the government.  Construction is still likely 6-9 months away, but we are very excited to have the process under way!

Another very exciting aspect of this deal is the fact that OnePower has committed its profits from the 20MW power plant to accomplishing our mission to build community minigrids in Lesotho.  This first milestone has already allowed us to put forward the cost-share required to receive a Feasibility Study grant from the European Union Electri-FI program ("Electrification Financing Initiative").  The result of this study, which should be completed by late 2018, will pave the pathway to procuring bank loans needed to scale up our minigrids program.  We have already taken the preliminary results of this study to potential funders, with positive response.  I am looking forward to sharing more on this in future reports!

My apologies for the absence of exciting field photos in this report - it's pretty chilly in Lesotho!  And though office work is not as photogenic, we're thrilled with what we have to share and the upcoming work from the field that it will enable...

Thank you again to all of you who are along for this crazy ride with us - it's been a busy 2018 so far and still much to come.

Best,

Matt

Hello again everyone!

I am very pleased to be sending this update, as Lesotho transitions out of summer and at the same time we are starting to welcome our "summer interns" from the northern hemisphere.

It's been a very exciting past few months - you've all been following along with us as we are bringing Ha Makebe's pilot minigrid online, and the team has been putting the final whistles and bells on the system as we await final authorization to move the generation infrastructure into place. (You'll see in the attached photos the team at Ha Makebe prepping the PV site and at headquarters testing the electronics for automated backup power and online error reporting.)

At the same time this year we are spinning up an extensive fellowship and internship program - between 5-10 individuals - led by our new Operations Manager Tamer (some of you may remember him from previous reports - he spent more than a year in Lesotho as our Project Manager a few years back). The fellowship program is welcoming international students from three different countries to Lesotho during 2018 to work on projects as varied as measuring development impacts of minigrid installation, outreach to career development programs for women, engineering design, and electrical system modeling, with individuals at every stage of education from undergraduate level to post-PhD. The internship program recruits domestic engineering students for 6-month attachments - often but not always as part of their degree program - to focus on projects like design and deployment of smart meters for studying electricity usage as well as giving interns insights into careers in the energy sector.

In the background we are making steady progress toward permitting and contracting for our larger on-grid and off-grid projects, kicking off a Feasibility study for Minigrid Development in Lesotho in early May with support from the EU's ElectriFI program! I am looking forward to sharing more on that in the next update.

As always I would like to reiterate our gratitude to all of you for your ongoing interest, and in many cases financial support. We couldn't do what we do without so many cheerleaders!

Until next time,

-Matt

Hello again to all of you,

I hope that 2018 has been treating everyone well, and we are excited to be sending you news from Lesotho! Our team has been incredibly busy these past months working on two big projects, and I’d like to give all of you a sneak peak of where we’re planning to go during the rest of 2018.

The first major project is the completion of the minigrid at Ha Makebe, which you have all been watching from afar for the past year or so. We are doing some last upgrades on the energy system (increasing the capacity to account for a few extra connections at a school and church in the village), aiming for installation within the next few months – a photo shows you the new larger-capacity PV tracker currently in validation at our headquarters at ATS in Maseru.

In parallel with this pilot system installation, however, behind-the-scenes we have been laying the groundwork for a roll-out of 25 minigrids across Lesotho over the next 2-3 years. This will be an incredible investment in Lesotho and improvement to the services experienced by rural Basotho, and we are thrilled to be in the last stages of fundraising for this effort. The pen hasn’t yet hit the paper, but I am hopeful that in my next announcement I will have more news on this front!

The other immense effort we have been undertaking for the past 18 months is the development of a proposal for Lesotho’s very first utility-scale solar power plant – a project the government conceived of and sent out for bid in 2016 and for which our team was selected as Preferred Bidder! Since that initial designation we have been building up a team, including internationally experienced funding and engineering firms with experience building similar plants across southern Africa and the globe, to bring the best possible design proposal to the government. In parallel we have been working with the communities in the area where this plant will be located – you’ll see me at the most recent Pitso (community meeting) in one of the photos – to ensure that the energy-independence win for Lesotho is also a win for the communities living near the site. It has been an interesting, complex, and very fun process so far, and I am also looking forward to sending updates as we move through the final contracting stages with the government so you’ll know when to keep an eye out for construction to start.

As part of these market-driven efforts and successes, in January 2018 we have finally officially spun-out 1Power Lesotho – the for-profit enterprise that will be driving this work forward. The 1Power inaugural team is built of the hard working individuals who have been helping STG in this direction for so many years, and wearing my STG Director hat I have to say I am immensely proud to finally have our hard work incubating these ideas and building the pipeline come to fruition in this way! And under my new 1Power Lesotho Director hat, I am very, very excited for things to come.

Independent of this change of name, I am looking forward to continuing to share news of our progress with all of you. Thank you again for the support you have provided over the years to help us get to where we are today!

Very best,

Matt

Links:

• 1Power Lesotho's website !