Ending Energy Poverty: Bboxx's IoT-Enabled Solar Power Solution

• Functional Applications - Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)
• Other - Battery

• Electrical Grids
• Renewable Energy

• Product Research & Development

• Additive Manufacturing
• Manufacturing Process Simulation

• Hardware Design & Engineering Services

Energy poverty, defined as the lack of access to modern energy services, affects over 840 million people globally. An additional billion people are connected to unreliable power grids, leading to connectivity losses that negatively impact both public and private sectors. Bboxx, a next-generation utility company, aims to address this issue by manufacturing, distributing, and financing decentralized solar-powered systems in developing countries. However, the company faced challenges in developing hardware units that are compact, easy to use, and capable of transforming solar energy into raw power. The design process required multiple iterations and collaboration among various team members, including electrical and mechanical engineers.

Bboxx's customers are primarily located in developing countries, where access to reliable, modern energy services is limited. These include rural households and microbusinesses that can benefit from the company's plug-and-play hardware units. The units are designed for easy use and work seamlessly with Bboxx Pulse®, an IoT technology-enabled comprehensive management platform that helps customers track and pay for their energy usage. Bboxx's products and services have positively impacted the lives of more than 1.5 million people in over 35 markets. The company's ambitious Tomorrow’s Rural Home initiative in Rwanda features multi-family homes equipped with Bboxx solar home systems, clean cooking solutions, a solar-powered irrigation system, and affordable Internet connectivity.

Bboxx relied on Altium Designer, a comprehensive management platform, to develop their hardware units. The platform enabled multiple team members to collaborate on the same projects, allowing electrical and mechanical engineers to easily work together and view their designs in 3D. Altium Designer's unified design environment made it easy to modify designs, with changes clearly highlighted and net names automatically appearing on pads inside the PCB editor. The platform's Output Jobs feature was particularly vital, making it easy to produce consistent manufacturing files for production. This feature saved the team hours, if not days, of time by generating manufacturing files for different contract manufacturers in seconds. Bboxx also formed strategic partnerships to scale its operations, including with CANAL+, a leading pay-TV company, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to expand clean cooking access.

• Bboxx's use of Altium Designer has streamlined the design and manufacturing process of their solar home systems. The platform's collaborative features have facilitated effective teamwork among electrical and mechanical engineers, while its unified design environment has simplified the modification of designs. The Output Jobs feature has been particularly beneficial, enabling the team to produce consistent manufacturing files for production easily and quickly. This has not only saved time but also ensured the production of reliable, high-quality solar home systems. Furthermore, Bboxx's strategic partnerships have expanded its reach and impact, allowing it to better address energy poverty in developing countries.

• Bboxx's solar home systems have provided over 1.5 million people worldwide with clean, reliable, and affordable energy.

• The systems have offset over 500,000 metric tons of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent).

• They generate over 14 megawatts of electricity every single day.