In this episode, we speak with Emily McAteer, CEO and Cofounder at Odyssey Energy Solutions and Eitan Hochster, VP of Business Development. Odyssey is a web-based platform that is facilitating rapid deployment of microgrids in emerging markets. Their data platform manages how mini-grid data is analyzed and communicated via software tools, data analytics and marketplaces, enabling mini-grid project developers to connect with investors, suppliers, donors and other market stakeholders. We speak about their work with the Rural Electrification Agency in Nigeria, their work with RBF (Results Based Financing) programs, how their platform is helping government and finance organisations manage their large scale decentralised energy programmes, and how the minigrid financing landscape is changing. Our conversation highlights the importance of operational data, and why aggregating and standardising minigrid data is necessary to accelerate the deployment of minigrid solutions in emerging markets. Contact us at podcast@distributingsolar.com Visit us at www.distributingsolar.com Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn Show notes: (2:00) Introduction to Odyssey Energy Solutions, their software platform focused on expanding access and financing into the minigrid sector. How the different stakeholders use their platform (5:30) Their engagement with government organisations, e.g. REA; funds e.g. CBEA (CrossBoundary Energy Access) Types of data they work with, e.g. CRMs, customer management systems, smart meters, inverters. The difficulty of investing in large numbers of minigrids due to the smaller size and vast amounts of data (10:30) Their approach to standardising minigrid data; their work with AMDA (17:00) The potential for Machine Learning in improving their forecasting and accuracy of their data models; meeting the need for asset owners and asset management (22:30) How Odyssey interacts with financing and how it encourages and supports financing into minigrids (26:00) Discussion on Results Based Financing, and how Odyssey works with RBF; strong signs of success in Nigeria (32:00) Emergence of project finance in minigrids (33:30) Odyssey's work on COVID19 with Cross Boundary; looking at consumer demand changes and electrification of health facilities (36:30) Eitan's and Emily's background and how they came into the energy access sector (39:00) The challenges of building Odyssey: trying to build a product for a future market (43:00) Their work with NEP (Nigerian Electrification Program) (44:00) Odyssey's financiers: FACTOR[e] and Shell Foundation (49:00) Where the name Odyssey comes from (49:30) Advice to new entrepreneurs in the energy sector (51:00) Predictions for the next 5 years: more business innovation, greater scale in the off-grid sector, mixing between SHS and mini-grids, maturing of project finance available. Podcast transcript: Distributing Solar: Eitan and Emily, thank you so much for joining us on Distributing Solar. Eitan and Emily: Thank you for having us. Distributing Solar: Odyssey Energy is a really impactful piece within the energy access sector and we're delighted to have you here because we've already had multiple guests speak about their experiences with Odyssey and how they've already been working with Odyssey Energy Solutions. According to the latest numbers on your website, you're already working in over 13 countries, have facilitated over $350 million into microgrids and supporting over 500 product developers. It would be great if you could start by providing us with an introduction to Odyssey for our listeners who don't already know about Odyssey and the work that you do. Emily: Odyssey is a software platform with the mission to enable large-scale capital deployment into solar mini grids, and other types of clean, distributed energy technologies in emerging markets. Our fundamental goal is to get lots of money moving into new types of energy assets to expand access to power. And the way that we do that is we build a data-driven investment and asset management platform that makes it easy to both evaluate investments in the sector and then manage a portfolio of investments once you've deployed capital. Distributing Solar: How does a partnership typically work for you? Do you work directly with the mini grid developers or do you work also with financiers? Eitan: We have all types of different users of our software and part of the theory of Odyssey from the beginning has been that it would make the whole sector move more efficiently if data could be easily shared between stakeholders. The idea being that if you're going to electrify hundreds of millions of people using distributed energy, that's a lot more data that needs to be evaluated, a lot more smaller projects creating a lot more information. And so, what we want out of Odyssey is to serve as a platform connecting different types of users. The core software might be the same for everybody, but they're different types of users. So a mini grid developer has the ability to use our tools to evaluate a project that might be in their pipeline. So we have technical and financial feasibility tools that are available. Similarly, an investor might be able to receive a proposal and view the technical and financial analysis has been done on Odyssey. And then, on top of those types of interactions, we have been focusing a lot on managing these large government and donor backed financing programs, essentially serving as a software platform where a government can collect proposals for publicly-backed financing of mini grids and solar home systems. And so for them, they have the ability to collect standardized proposals and really run their programs much more efficiently, ultimately allowing them to deploy more capital into these programs and to have these programs run much more efficiently, whereas in the past there has been a lot of delays in program implementation. And so hopefully, you know what we're doing and what we're seeing in our early projects is that the results are happening faster. Distributing Solar: And if I understand how the platform works it seems as though it's a software platform that allows product developers to enter in key information about a project that they're either planning to do or have started working on. Perhaps, information about the capacity of mini grid, et cetera, and then to match that with financiers who are interested in investing in mini grid projects. And then also then to open up that monitoring process as the grids are installed, implemented, managing information. So maybe if you could speak about the different types of data that you're pulling in, what are the analytical components that are really core to Odyssey's platform. Emily: Yeah, so just a clarification. We do a little bit less of the matchmaking as you described and typically the way that our platform is deployed is that we will partner with a financier or a financial institution that's looking to deploy capital into the sector. And then we use that platform to standardize all of the data and interactions that that financial institution will have with all of the different stakeholders engaged in the process. Just to give you a couple of examples of what those institutions might look like, one of our biggest customers is the rural electrification agency of Nigeria that's running now about a half a billion dollar program to finance solar home systems and mini grids in Nigeria. And so what our platform does is manages the entire life cycle of the investments that the REA is making and so any private sector company that's looking to receive financing for their distributed energy assets from Rio will go through a process in our platform where they apply for financing, they submit on a rolling basis, proof that they have connected customers. And then finally they received their financial disbursements based on the results that they've achieved in terms of electrifying customers. Another example, that's the same technology, but kind of a different use case is a commercial investor, like Crossboundary Energy Access. So, CBEA is a commercial project finance fund for mini grids. They're actually the first mini grid, asset funding in the market and they use our platform to manage their entire portfolio. And so when they need to ask critical questions about are the operators that we've invested in meeting their operational agreements, how is our portfolio performing in terms of system performance and economic performance, we collect all of the data from their systems that are in their portfolio and help them answer those questions. On the type of data that we collect again, it really spans the life cycle of a project. Upfront we’ll standardize the process of the techno-economic data that needs to go into planning a mini grid project. So that's information about where the project is located, what the capital expenditures of the project are expected to be, what the forecasted energy at the site will be. We run all of that through a standardized financial model and so it becomes easy to aggregate many projects up using this sort of standardized data format into a portfolio that can then be more assessed by a financer who's looking to make an investment into many of these projects. Then once the project is up and operating, that's when we start collecting operational data and we plug into a number of different data sources, all which feed us very high volumes of granular data directly from the system. We'll plug into the system inverter, we’ll plug into the smart meter, we'll plug into other operational systems that the developer might be using like a customer relationship management system. And we pull all that together into a standardized data model that then allows for analysis and analytics on the portfolio as a whole. Distributing Solar: When you're speaking about the data sources that are bein
