BBOXX provides reliable energy for remote communities

Case Studies | July 2018

Delivering reliable off-grid energy to Africa and the developing world.

Business Need

BBOXX is the brainchild of three graduates of Imperial College London. The final-year project to deliver electricity to a village in Rwanda has turned into a serious, global business proposition designing, manufacturing and distributing solar systems. Fundamental to this solution is connectivity and the means to manage this globally from a single platform.

Solution

The BBOXX solution is a smart solar power generator, capable of being managed centrally. Remote monitoring allows BBOXX to check for faults, install firmware updates and shut down the units in the event of missed payments. Vodafone managed connectivity means BBOXX can deploy quickly anywhere in the world. Five thousand units have already been deployed, there are a further 6,000 in production and 8,000 on order. BBOXX aims to have 100,000 units in the market by the end of 2016, mostly in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

Business Benefits

• Enables BBOXX to launch robust, off-grid power unit, with the means to serve rural communities
• Vodafone IoT enables the business to plan for expansion from 1,000 units to four million within six years
• Provides a real-time view of customer usage and payments from a single global platform
• Builds a detailed picture of off-grid energy use, invaluable for next rounds of funding

The units can be up and running almost out-of-the-box. Activation takes less than an hour, managed from London. We have units operational in more than 12 countries, from Ghana to Pakistan – this would not have been possible without Vodafone.
Chris Baker-Brian,
Chief Technology Officer, BBOXX