Energy Tech Company, Beacon Power Services Secures $2.7M for Expansion
A seed round of $2.7 million has been secured by energy technology business Beacon Power Services (BPS), which provides data and grid management solutions to assist Africa’s power sector to distribute electricity more effectively.
Seedstars Africa Ventures led the company’s seed round, which also included Persistent Energy, Kepple Africa Ventures, Factor[e], and Oridun Capital Management.
“As a society, we have recognized that climate change is one of the biggest threats to our generation, and it is critical that we use smart capital to support entrepreneurs across Africa who are developing innovative and locally relevant solutions to this challenge,” said Maxime Bouan, managing partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures.
With the additional capital, BPS will be able to enhance its present goods (product upgrades to include new features and automation) and grow outside of Nigeria and Ghana, where it already operates, into other markets.
An aerospace engineer named Bimbola Adisa launched the business in 2014 in an effort to remedy the insufficient electrical supply provided by power distribution corporations.
The utility company, which has offices in the US and Nigeria, offers utilities analytics and software for energy management. Adora, its AI-powered grid management technology, addresses one of the two major issues power distribution firms in Africa face.
The company’s creator and CEO, Bimbola Adisa, told TechCruch that after spending a number of years working for a producer of power turbines and as an investment banker covering the U.S.
He said that the majority of his clients were manufacturers, service providers, and electric utilities. He claimed that these experiences exposed him to the use of technology in the power industry, and he saw an opportunity to do so in Nigeria and other countries in Africa.
The program links to every utility asset and customer node on the grid, providing real-time visibility into network performance for electric utilities. This enables the distribution of electricity more effectively while preventing outages and identifying network losses.
The company’s patented Customer and Asset Information Management System platform addresses the second issue, which is data-focused (CAIMs). In Africa, utilities struggle to have a complete database of its clients, assets, and grid topology (the relationship between assets and customers).
The CAIMs addresses this by taking into account the particular constraints that African utilities must work within, such as inadequate address systems, and assisting them in digitizing their data, which lays the groundwork for network expansion.
“Although some of the world’s most rapidly expanding cities are located in Africa, most people think of the continent’s rural parts, where there is little to no access to electricity. However, without greatly increasing energy access and dependability throughout its major cities, Africa will not be able to flourish, according to CEO Adisa.
“We built a bespoke solution for power providers on the continent to increase daily grid supply of electricity when we learned that solutions designed for established markets fail to handle the particular infrastructural constraints Africa faces.”
Adisa claims that BPS has expanded from one utility in Nigeria to four utilities in two nations, including Ghana, serving more than 8 million clients in both the residential and commercial sectors.
According to Adisa, the business strategy of BPS comprises long-term partnerships with its clients rather than merely the sale of goods. In exchange for service-based payments proportionate to the value it generates, the company can postpone most of the upfront costs associated with implementing its technology.
The company says it differs from other platforms because it provides “local solutions that factor in the local operating environment in Africa.”
