Cheaper and More Reliable Than Diesel
The potential global benefits are vast. But there is much more work to do. In Nigeria alone, 80 million people still live off-grid, and those with the grid receive less than 7 hours of electricity per day, usually powered by highly pollutant diesel. It’s not just dirty; it’s expensive and unreliable: Nigerians spend $28 to $50 billion dollars a year on diesel, and need to deal with constant mechanical repairs.
Globally, 660 million people still don’t have reliable access to electricity, and the World Bank estimates that this number won’t change by 2030 at current rates of electrification and population growth.
The dominant technology currently used to electrify these populations are mini-grids. Think overhead power lines feeding power to a neighborhood, but instead of coming from multiple large power plants, they’re being fed from one centralized solar and battery array in the community. These have helped, but they’re prohibitively expensive for most rural communities. Only a single mini-grid developer in the world has so far reported a profitable mini-grid.
The Difference Between Mini-Grids and Mesh-Grids
The problem is that those large overhead lines are expensive — the most expensive part of the entire mini-grid. Mesh-grids use thinner, safer and drastically cheaper cables that only travel rooftop-to-rooftop, rather than along entire streets. Those cables provide 50V DC distribution while each household is able to access plenty of AC power (up to 3.6kW).
Globally, 80-90% of communities are too sparse to be profitable for mini-grids. The lower cost to connect each household in a mesh-grid changes this story — and transforms lives and economies.
Okra Solar started in Cambodia, when co-founders Damian Veling and Afnan Hanan were visiting rural communities, and inspired to help provide them with reliable electrical power, and the economic development and global connection it offers. Colleagues for 3 years at an IoT startup, they combined their software and electronics experience to tackle the problem.
Hurdles and Surprises
It hasn’t always been easy. And we’ve overcome countless surprises.
In the early days we noticed some odd equipment failures in the field in Cambodia. Some inverters were short circuiting unexpectedly. Small geckos seemed to find our inverter enclosures to be excellent hiding spots, but they caused internal short circuits which fried the components (and, sadly, the geckos too).
In Haiti, many end users discovered creative ways to bypass our metering device for free power, sometimes using dangerous methods such as installing cable or live terminals to bypass them. This pushed us to innovate the product and build a secure enclosure around it, which initially got bypassed by users using paperclips to pick locks. The engineering team have since overcome these hurdles and more, each unexpected situation and challenge along the way offering a valuable lesson.
Regulation has been a big hurdle, especially since it differs massively between countries. In fact, that’s why we pivoted away from Cambodia and the Philippines to focus on Africa.
In our industry, the government is a massive determinant of whether or not we have a market to sell into. In the Southeast Asian markets, the government had chosen to become the sole energy distributor and retailer.
However in Nigeria the governing body, the Rural Electrification Agency, had advocated for an open market where private utilities could participate, compete and set their own tariffs, which enabled them to choose the most effective technology to get the job done.
Why Silicon Valley’s “Blitzscaling” Won’t Work Here
Rather than the standard ‘blitzscaling’ approach popularized by Silicon Valley startups, in which they “scale fast and seek huge returns,” we’ve learned it’s imperative to work closely with regulators from the start to ensure that mesh-grids are not only recognized but specifically considered and even supported in new regulations. The market opportunity to both make a positive impact and profits is huge, but it takes time to make sure the approach is aligned with the government, which is a key stakeholder in the energy access business.
This approach has proved successful in Nigeria, as the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) has been supportive of mesh-grid technology and made it part of the DARES program, the largest energy access grant program in the world.
Off the back of the successful implementation in Nigeria, the largest off-grid energy market, we’re now entering Mozambique, Madagascar, and actively looking at Ethiopia, Liberia, and DRC as follow-on markets.
The Business Case for Mesh-Grids Now
Okra Solar is a technology provider, not a utility. We develop the mesh-grid tech and hardware that local developers can deploy. That offers multiple advantages. And the business case is compelling:
• CAPEX Advantage: Solar and battery prices have dropped ~80-90% in the last decade. Mesh-grids reduce distribution costs by up to 90% compared to conventional mini-grids, making them better suited for sparse communities.
• Displacing Carbon at Profit: Consumers are paying less than half for solar electricity from a mesh grid compared to diesel fuel. And that’s before factoring in maintenance costs for generators, as well as transport costs and logistics for fuel, and the health impact of diesel pollution.
• Productive Use: This electricity isn’t used just for lights and appliances; it drives economic growth. It replaces diesel used in mills, workshops, and shops, driving improved standards of living.
• Future-Proofing: While diesel fuel is exposed to global oil shocks and resource exhaustion — prices have spiked more than 50% during the Iran war — solar and battery costs are deflationary. The economics only get better over time.
The Future is Distributed
Just as mobile phones leapfrogged landlines across the developing world, mesh-grid technology is now bypassing the slow, capital-heavy infrastructure of traditional grids entirely, reaching the sparse rural communities that centralized power was never going to serve. With technology advancing, regulators like Nigeria’s REA opening the door, and an economic case that only strengthens with time, energizing the unconnected is no longer a charitable ambition. It’s an investable, scalable reality and the architecture of how the next billion people come online.
Article by Tim Ha, as Marketing Lead at Okra Solar, he aims to bridge the gap between engineering and human-centric storytelling to accelerate global energy access. Originally an electrical engineer in Australia, Tim later spent years in Cambodia as a filmmaker, documenting the lived realities of rural communities. Today, he combines these two worlds to help get mesh-grid technology to the “last mile,” ensuring that even the most remote households can access life-changing electricity.
Article reprinted with Permission as part of GreenMoney’s ongoing collaboration with Climate and Capital Media
