Seville, 23rd January 2019 – SolarWorx is among the winners of the Europe-wide round of the “Empower a billion lives” (EBL) award, initiated by the IEEE Power Electronics Society. After having successfully passed the first round in autumn 2018, SolarWorx will now compete in the global finals in Baltimore, USA in November 2019. The prize money for the regional round was 11,000€.
The competition is dedicated to combating energy poverty around the world. By fostering innovative energy sources, technologies, and business models the transition towards an universal energy access as stated in the UN Sustainable Development Goals shall be accelerated. The focus is on scalable productive-use cases, in which local customers benefit from business opportunities coming with the technology.
SolarWorX was chosen for it’s innovative microgrid approach. A pilot project in Cameroon shall be deployed in which a decentral DC microgrid is directly compared to an existing AC microgrid with a centralized power production on a village level. The goal is to evaluate power connection costs between the two approaches as well as in competition to classic AC grid extensions.
“In the extensive and scarcely populated regions of sub-Saharan Africa, the classic grid expansion must be critically questioned. Alternative concepts such as DC Microgrids appear promising and should be evaluated in further studies with regard to investment and maintenance costs. For their support regarding our project we would like to thank the initiators of EBL.” states Felix Boldt, CEO of SolarWorX
