SOLbox

SOLshare’s solution is currently serving over 4,000 beneficiaries through access to clean energy.
40% of the end users are women and children. Many women have started their own home-grown businesses through access to energy, which has increased safety and allows women to work and children to study after dark.
Selling excess energy of over 25 MWh, customers earned additional income worth over USD $16,000.
Peer-to-peer energy trading provides 75 MWh of additional energy to over 600 households and microbusinesses.
Over 95 microbusinesses, including women owned businesses, experience additional income valued at over USD $6,000 through access to reliable energy.

In addition to providing an energy supply, SOLshare's smart bidirectional meter allows prosumers to buy and sell energy depending on their usage.

Key Features

SOLshare created the world’s first peer-to-peer energy exchange network of rural households and small businesses with rooftop solar home systems, which enables a more efficient distribution of electricity across the rural communities. The point of interconnection with the P2P microgrids is SOLshare’s own SOLbox – a smart bidirectional meter which allows prosumers to buy and sell energy depending on their usage. Currently, SOLshare is in the process of developing the SOLbox NG (next generation), a far more powerful SOLbox which will allow end-users to access more energy, use more powerful productive energy use appliances, provide better data quality to our backend and allow for dynamic pricing.

SOLshare’s current box, though effective, is a 12V DC box. The new box will allow for far more transmission of energy at 1000W which will enable our users more options to integrate productive energy use appliances. Before our users would have to find appliances compatible with the system, however now they will have the option of using more powerful appliances; both AC and DC. Overall, the SOLbox NG will help SOLshare provide better customer satisfaction and increase rural entrepreneurship ultimately leading to rural economic growth. This puts SOLshare at the forefront of technology innovation to improve thousands of lives through sustainable energy access.

We have developed an IoT driven platform called the SOLbazaar which consists of the SOLbox, SOLapp and the SOLweb. This platform allows our customers to trade excess solar energy generated by their solar home systems (SHS). To put it simply, it’s a “dynamic energy market place” where the SHS-users come to sell their excess energy to non SHS-users or those who cannot afford a SHS. One party earns the money and the other party gets access to affordable electricity. The energy sellers can also choose to keep the excess energy for themselves and use it to run additional appliances such as a TV, fridge or even a computer!

Social Impact

Bangladesh is currently the global market leader in SHS installations, which serve nearly 6 million households and 25 million people. Despite this overwhelming success, widespread energy poverty continues to plague the nation, where nearly 60 million people still lack access to electricity, due to inadequate distribution networks. This is where SOLshare’s solution addresses the gap. To date, SOLshare’s peer-to-peer energy exchange platform, SOLbazaar, has connected nearly 500 households into 30 microgrids (28 in Bangladesh and 2 in India to date), which have consumed approximately 75 MWh and sold 25 MWh of electricity. However, this is merely scratching the surface, when compared to its $1 billion market opportunity (amount of excess energy only). By connecting all six million households with solar home systems across Bangladesh, with the 60 million people who lack access to electricity, SOLshare can create a series of interconnected microgrids that generate up to 250MW (~1.5% of Bangladesh’s total installed power capacity as of December 2019) and 2,400 MWh of battery storage. More importantly, by setting and controlling the transaction price within this microgrid system, SOLshare would establish a strong competitive advantage against new market entrants.

Future Plans

SOLshare’s focus will be on revenue generation and improving the SOLgrid unit economics. We will increase our productive energy by scaling up with the SOLbox Next Generation (NG) and 50 new grids with SOLbox NG and increased productive loads for grid sustainability and profitability. We will also be focusing on R&D + product development: completion and testing of the SOLbox NG. SOLshare will look into new sites/markets for survey and development as well as customer acquisition. In terms of further development, we will collaborate for technical feasibility of grid integration with SOLshare’s solution in achieving grid integration through a point of common coupling (PCC) and a community PPA (power purchasing agreement) allowing for increased contribution of renewables to national energy targets.

Main Target Group

SOLshare operates in a B2B model. The solution is bought by grid operators and partner organizations.

Main User

1. Consumers – Villagers who do not have a system of their own and are pure off-takers.

2. Prosumers – Villagers with a solar home system (SHS) who, at times, need more power (and other times less). They can be a net-producer or consumer depending on their usage pattern.

3. Producers – Villagers who turn out to be solar entrepreneurs who obtain solar generation and storage assets for the purpose of selling.