Beacon Power Services (BPS), an energy tech company providing data and grid management solutions to help Africa’s power sector distribute electricity more efficiently, has said that it closed a $2.7 million round of seed financing. The round was led by Seedstars Africa Venture with participation from persistent energy, Factor[e], Kepple Africa Ventures, and Oridun Capital Management. The funding will allow the company to enhance its product offerings, support growth in its current operations and expand beyond Nigeria and Ghana. Today, a majority of power companies in Africa are unable to provide customers with reliable and affordable electricity. In some of the continent’s largest cities, the average daily supply of electricity is less than 12 hours. As a result, a significant amount of the population, including most businesses, substitute grid supply with expensive private diesel generators, which cause considerable pollution and contribute to climate change.
The lack of reliable electricity supply, specifically in Africa’s urban business centers, is an impediment to the environment and the continent’s economic growth. To address this problem, BPS has developed an AI-enabled smart grid platform, Adora, that provides real-time visibility on network performance for electric utilities. Adora connects to every utility asset and customer node on the grid, allowing energy providers to preempt outages, identify network losses, and distribute electricity more efficiently. “As a society, we have recognised 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 localised solutions to tackle this challenge,” said Maxime Bouan, Managing Partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures. “The BPS team has demonstrated success in partnering with Africa’s power companies to deploy data driven solutions that are relevant to their specific operating conditions. We recognise the significant economic, social and environmental impact of this technology that innovatively solves affordable electricity access. We are excited about the potential to support the team’s expansion to continue to disrupt power access and reliability across the continent.”
“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 Bimbola Adisa, Founder & Chief Executive Officer of BPS. “When we realised 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. We have helped our utility clients reduce network losses significantly, recover unrealised revenue and improve electricity reliability for over 30 million consumers and businesses. Most importantly, our technology is having a real impact on sustainable economic development and climate change in Africa by reducing the continent’s reliance on diesel generators.”
