ICE develops renewable energy models for businesses, communities

It is no longer news that Nigerians spend about $14 billion on generators and fuel yearly in order to avoid crippling downtime for their businesses.

It has also been established that over 215 million people in Nigeria do not have access to reliable electricity due to weak infrastructure

However, in order to change the narratives, ICE Commercial Power, a Nigerian-based renewable energy provider, has developed solar energy models that allow small businesses and underserved communities to connect to reliable and affordable clean energy, monitor their energy usage online and better manage their power consumption.

According to the company, businesses and communities participating in the programme would see exactly how much power they are consuming and the associated cost.

Before partnering with Microsoft, ICE said it had deployed an early pilot project as a proof-of-concept for their new model for off-grid electrification at the last mile.

For this work, the company said it has deployed 20 solar microgrids connecting 170 underserved micro-businesses across three communities.

However, the company said it found that much of their maintenance and operational procedures had several manual steps and required considerable human intervention to ensure a smooth customer experience for connected micro businesses.

ICE said it has made a significant impact in the time it worked with Microsoft.

Commenting, the CEO at ICE Commercial Power, Emmanuel Ekwueme, said that ICE partnered with Microsoft to develop a robust cloud and software back-end to support the maintenance and management of deployed solar microgrids in the field.

In addition, he said the company is working with Microsoft to scale the youth training and employment efforts in target communities.

“Our work on the Ignite programme has led to the digital upskilling of 47 youth to canvass three communities and identified 12,885 underserved micro businesses for deployment,” he explained.

ICE Commercial Power co-founder, Maxwell Okperi said that partnership with Microsoft and access to Microsoft tools and developer teams have been very beneficial.

“A typical example is the Microsoft team, which allows me access anywhere in the world to reach out to my team and monitor day-to-day operations.

“With the Azure platform, I can monitor business operations, and I can track all the data I need to track, I can monitor revenue, I can even predict when I will have maintenance call-outs,” he said.

On ease of payment, Ekwueme further disclosed that ICE developed a USSD workflow to centralize and enable seamless digital payments for clean energy by microgrid-connected micro businesses.

This platform, he said, facilitated by Azure, has enabled ICE customers to directly track their energy usage and make mobile payments seamlessly with their features and smart mobile phones.

“This approach significantly simplified our maintenance and operations workflow. Specifically, it has streamlined payment collections from up to 12 different modes of payment to one single, user-friendly USSD workflow. This has also contributed to a notable 48 per cent decrease in recurring maintenance calls that require human intervention,” Ekwueme said.

According to him, the business development support that came as a result of being a Microsoft ATO portfolio company was unmatched.

“The partnership with Microsoft enables us to leverage a powerful cloud platform to deliver quality service to our customers,” he said.

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