ePowerCart - Affordable Mobile Clean Energy for Remote Communities in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa and India

Although progress towards energy access for all is being made in developing regions, 675m people worldwide are still living without access to modern energy services \[Tracking SDG7, The Energy Progress Report, 2023\]. Hundreds of millions more people live with unreliable or expensive electricity. Following the Covid-19 pandemic, Sub-Saharan Africa's share of the global population without access rose from 74% to 77%. Since only 26% of SSA's rural population had access to electricity pre-pandemic, remote rural communities continue to lack energy access and are at risk of being left behind.

People living without clean energy, depend on biomass and diesel fuels, which are highly detrimental their health and the environment. Moreover, lack of affordable and reliable energy access is a key barrier to economic and human development in emerging economies.

Power Roll Ltd, The Energy and Resources Institute, India (TERI) and On Call Africa (OCA), will develop a mobile energy solution, specifically designed bring to clean, reliable and affordable energy access to underserved, isolated communities in remote areas of Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. We will work with rural communities and organisations in India and Zambia to ensure our solution is carefully designed, considering end-user needs and potential impacts on Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI).

Power Roll Ltd has developed a unique, ultra-low-cost, ultra-light weight, photovoltaic (PV) thin-film based on highly innovative micro-groove architecture. We will bond our flexible PV film to pop-up fabric trailer-tents, and combine this with remotely managed energy storage to produce an affordable, transportable and pop-up, ready-to-use energy system, 'ePowerCart'.

We will design and build ePowerCart prototypes for electrical/mechanical performance testing performance and field trials in India and Zambia including:

* Girls' school/college, Mukteshwar (India) powering IT resources (improving connectivity), and electric lighting (extending study time)
* Chalimongela/Kanyanga's mothers' shelter (S.Zambia), enabling health/sanitation education outreach, vaccination programmes, and mobile ultrasound unit (improving health and mother/baby mortality rates)
* Community/agricultural solar water pumping (displacing water collection)

Post-project, initially, Power Roll Ltd will produce ePowerCarts in the UK and manage distribution. Subsequently, ePowerCart will be produced for suppliers by local, in-country manufacturers via a licensing model.

Successful project delivery will accelerate affordable, reliable clean energy access for our field trial participants and other remote Sub-Saharan African/Indian communities with similar climates and terrain. This will bring positive health, economic and environmental impacts to the most isolated, underserved and marginalised communities.