Impact

“Implement innovative business models that reduce upfront capital investment requirements (pay-as-you-use) to improve affordability of off-grid solar refrigerators. Companies need to provide solar off-grid refrigerators to customers on a model that eases the requirement of upfront investment. For example, the build-operate-lease-transfer (BOLT) model can be experimented with where customers pay monthly installments as a lease for a fixed duration of time. Once the company has received repayment on the capital and recurring costs, then the ownership of the technology can be transferred to the customer.

Another model is pay-as-you-use, which allows customers to pay for cooling service based on the capacity of their usage. Companies can partner with energy-as-a-service companies like KPay to integrate their technology platform with off-grid solar refrigerators. KPay has three models for the provision of energy-as-a-service that includes pay-per-use, pay-per-time, and pay-per-ampere. In such systems, the off-grid solar refrigerator is embedded with a digital device that will switch cooling on or off based on the amount of payment made by the customers.

These business models solve the challenge of high upfront cost of technology that has curtailed the market penetration of off-grid solar refrigerators. Across both these models, customers can make payments in installments, hence improving affordability”.

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