Beacon Power Services (BPS), an energy technology firm that delivers data and grid management solutions to assist Africa’s power sector distribute electricity more efficiently, has announced the closing of a $2.7 million seed round.
“Africa is home to the fastest growing cities in the world, but when most people think of energy access in Africa, they think of the rural areas with little or no access to electricity at all. However, it is impossible for Africa to develop without significantly improving electricity access and reliability across its major cities,” said CEO Adisa in a statement. “When we realized that solutions designed for mature markets fail to address the unique infrastructure challenges Africa faces, we developed a tailored solution for power companies on the continent to improve daily grid supply of electricity.”
Seedstars Africa Ventures led the company’s seed round, which included Persistent Energy, Kepple Africa Ventures, Factor[e], and Oridun Capital Management.
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The new money will allow BPS to improve its present products (add new features and implement automation) and expand into other markets outside of Nigeria and Ghana, where it now operates.
“As a society, we have recognized climate change as one of the biggest threats to our generation, and it is critical we use smart capital to support entrepreneurs across Africa who are creating innovative and localized solutions to tackle this challenge,” Maxime Bouan, managing partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures, said, about the investment.
A Look At What Beacon Power Services Does
Bimbola Adisa, the company’s founder and CEO, is an aeronautical engineer who founded the company in 2014 after working for a power turbine maker and as an investment banker covering the power sector in the United States. The majority of his clientele for the latter comprised energy utilities, service providers, and manufacturers. In an interview with TechCrunch, he stated that these experiences exposed him to the application of technology in the power sector, which he viewed as a potential to apply in Nigeria and throughout Africa.
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Adisa established BPS in 2014 in response to insufficient electricity supply from power distribution providers. The utility company established in the United States and Nigeria offers energy management software and analytics to utilities. Adora, its AI-enabled grid management technology, solves one of two core difficulties that African power distribution firms face.
The software provides electric utilities with real-time visibility into network performance and connects to every utility asset and customer node on the grid, allowing energy providers to anticipate outages and identify network losses, respond to them quickly, and distribute electricity more efficiently.
“The result is that utilities can operate more efficiently, recover more revenue, and by reducing outages, customers get increased supply of electricity (more hours supplied daily), so everyone wins,” said BFS in a statement.
The other issue is one of data, which is addressed through the company’s proprietary platform known as the Customer and Asset Information Management system (CAIMs). African utilities struggle to keep an accurate database of its customers, assets, and grid topology (the relationship between assets and customers). The CAIMs addresses this by taking into account the particular conditions under which Africa’s utilities operate, such as weak address systems, and assisting them in digitising their data, which acts as a foundation for network enhancements.
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According to Adisa, BPS has expanded from a single utility in Nigeria to four utilities in two countries, including Ghana, with over 8 million consumers (residential and businesses). According to Adisa, BPS’s business philosophy comprises engaging with its clients as long-term partners rather than merely selling items. As a result, the company can delay the majority of the upfront cost of installing its technology in exchange for service-based payments proportionate to the value it provides.
The eight-year-old energy utility firm claims to be different from others because it offers “local solutions that take into account the local operating environment in Africa.” Most off-the-shelf solutions designed for established markets, for example, do not account for the frequency of outages in Africa or network connectivity challenges, but BPS claims its solutions do.
Beacon Power energy Beacon Power energy
Charles Rapulu Udoh
Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard. You can book a session and speak with him using the link: https://insightsbyexperts.com/view_expert/charles-rapulu-udoh