SOLAR ENERGY THAT IS SMART, MOBILE AND HIGHLY FLEXIBLE

BACKGROUND

In recent years, Power-Blox as a social entrepreneur has successfully implemented electrification projects in Vanuatu, Laos, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Uganda, and in more than 20 other countries in Sub Sahara Africa, South es Asia, and the Pacific region. Power-Blox has partnered successfully with companies from the private sector as well as with NGOs, the German GIZ, and UN organizations to develop a holistic ecosystem of solutions that “ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all”.

“Together with our partners we have developed and tested several business models from kilowatt-based tariffs to lease-to-own models,” says Alessandro Medici, CTO, and founder of Power-Blox. To run those models in extremely remote spots, further products and services have followed, like a smart electricity metering solution, a cloud-based energy sales platform, and gateways that enable remote monitoring, over-the-air updates as well as predictive maintenance solutions based on the data provided. “Our holistic solution combined with connectivity allows us to serve even the most remote places across the globe with reliable and resilient renewable electricity.” says Alessandro Medici and adds: “Especially during the COVID-Lockdowns when going on site was impossible, our connectivity solutions were essential to operate and maintain our systems.

CHALLENGE

Power-Blox was facing three major challenges:

• How to provide globally available energy management on thousands of single and clustered Power-Blox units while having to negotiate with hundreds of Mobile Network Operators and dozens of price plans?
• How to provide a globally stable and 24/7/365 available energy management, monitoring, and trading platform?
• Security? Data coming from and going to a Power-Blox have to be handled confidentially. Power-Blox wants to ensure its client's best possible privacy.

Each PBX cluster consists of one to nine PBX devices, controlled by an embedded Linux gateway, responsible for the device and cloud communication. All actors and sensors within a PBX exchange their data with the gateway via a PBX internal Bluetooth transceiver. The gateway connects to a locally available WiFi network and in case of WiFi unavailability automatically switches to the globally accessible mobile network provided by ConnectedYou.

ConnectedYou acts as a single point of contact for the best global and local mobile network operators. Its unique IoT service platform consolidates the best services and solutions of these MNO partners.

“ConnectedYou offers the best possible prices paired with an excellent and reliable service, seamless connectivity around the globe, today and in the future with the possibility to change Mobile-Network-Providers anytime, flexibly over the air (OTA)” said Markus Parzefall, Head of R&D at Power-Blox

WHAT KIND OF DATA IS TRANSMITTED

Two kinds of data are transmitted:

• In the beginning, the data volume will concentrate on small data in order to control and monitor the PBX devices in a bi-directional way.
• “In the future, we can imagine providing even Internet access over the same gateway infrastructure,” said Markus Parzefall.

FIRST DEPLOYMENTS - 

• Power supply for telephone communication to 200 – 300 Mountain huts for Swisscom in Switzerland
• Village electrification projects in Vanuatu, Laos, Mozambique, Mali, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania
• Electrification of 42 remote health centers in Mozambique
• Special equipment for disaster relief agencies such as the DEZA, Médecins sans frontières (doctors without borders), and the red cross
• Electrification projects in refugee settlements for UNDP / UNHCR and the International Lifeline Fund, with a focus on the productive use of energy applications
• Various projects within the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals

WHY CONNECTEDYOU WAS CHOSEN

• One single partner for all global data communication (M2M)
• Cost-efficient scale-up to larger data volumes
• Real-time SIM card management
• Secure communication with devices
• Efficient data visualization

In order to fulfill the project goals in a short time and professional way, it is very important for Power-Blox to have a partner like ConnectedYou, who provides flexible and secure connectivity and data management on a global scale.

Thanks to ConnectedYou, Power-Blox is able to create a great business package for their partners and clients on a global scale, and react fast and professionally to their communication in a rapidly growing IoT B2B market.

Especially the advanced real-time SIM card management tools by ConnectedYou make it very practical for Power-Blox to manage devices and their data consumption in real time around the globe.

FUTURE PLAN

In the future, Power-Blox plans to embed the SIM modules into their PBX-Gateways. This will greatly reduce the SIM logistic because there will be no physical SIM handling. All SIM services will be managed over the air, directly and 100% flexible.

ABOUT POWER-BLOX

Power-Blox is an award-winning Swiss company that develops, produces, and distributes intelligent swarm electrification solutions. It has developed a ground-breaking, potentially disruptive technology, which supported by an algorithm, allows the setup of a swarm grid with a decentralized architecture and no centralized control (i.e. master/slave principle). This enables automated and decentralized power regulation and storage within the grid. We call it “the internet of energy” as it follows the principles of the Arpanet. The system is self-learning and self-regulating; it regulates power production, consumption, and distribution in the grid intelligently and autonomously. Moreover, it allows to easily combine different energy sources and battery systems, without the need for configuration. Power-Blox has already won several awards (Intersolar Smarter E Award 2019, Axpo Energy Award 2014, UN National Energy Globe Award of Tanzania 2015). The nearly endless scalability of the Power-Blox system represents a breakthrough in energy technology. It allows scalable growth based on increasing energy demands, without the need of modifying/replacing existing installations. Power-Blox was founded in July 2015 by Alessandro Medici and Armand Martin. It is a privately held company headquartered in Frick, Switzerland.