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Mini-Grids vs. Mesh-Grids
Off-grid communities vary in size, location and energy-demand, so choosing the right technology is key to ensuring long-term project success. -- If you're short of time, you can skim through by reading the bolded text only - it will give you the general gist of this...
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OGEF signs agreement with Alina’s Enèji to bring power to 300 households in Haiti
Marchand Dessalines - Haiti | 2022.02.18 - The Haiti-based Off-Grid Electricity Fund (OGEF), co-financed by the World Bank, has provided USD 230,000 to project developers, Alina’s Enèji, for the deployment of mesh-grids to 300 households in rural Haiti. This comes...
Okra Solar Mesh-grids gets approval by REA for output-based funding subsidy
The REA’s Output Based Funding Program is Subsidising Mesh-grids, and Developers are Getting On-board
Nigeria is the largest off-grid energy market in the world, with 80 million people waiting to be connected to reliable energy.Drone shot of a last-mile village in Kaduna, Nigeria, that's about to be energized via an Okra mesh-grid If you're short of time, you can skim...
Edamame V1.17
Highlights Optimized data for remote debugging Stability improvements Optimized data for remote debuggingIn order to ensure the highest quality of service both to households and when supporting customer maintenance teams, the data each device sends to the cloud is...
Pod Edamame v3
HighlightsUX, Manufacturing, and Reliability OptimizationUX, Manufacturing, and Reliability OptimizationThe Pod Edamame v2 was first deployed in the field almost 1 year ago exactly. It fixed an issue that we saw in earlier releases which prevented continuous usage of...
Okra Solar, SAO Group partner to power 10,000 households, PHCs, others
Harvest v1.24
Highlights Push Notifications Stability improvementsPush NotificationsTo improve adoption and usability of the previously deployed Todo List feature, this release enables push notifications to the local maintenance agent’s phone, whenever a new “todo” or work item is...
Harvest Mobile v1.7
Highlights Collections Management Stability improvements Collections managementWhen it comes to money, visibility and reliability are absolute musts. For local payment agents, they are collecting cash on behalf of the grid owner and want to know exactly how much they...
Harvest Product Blog
Designed to seamlessly guide energy companies from the beginning to the end of running profitable energy grids.When it comes to deploying remote, off-grid infrastructure, the management and maintenance of the assets can be the biggest challenge. On top of trying to...
Overcoming the unseen barrier to sustainable energy uptake.
Why are 850Mn people living without access to reliable energy? The answer may be in an overlooked barrier to energy adoption - The high cost of electrical appliances. Bringing reliable and renewable energy to off-grid communities alleviates poverty, improves climate...
It’s Time for More Open Source in Energy Access. Here’s Why.
Harvest Mobile v1.6
HighlightsTodo listsTodo listsImproving the O&M and fieldwork experience for our customers and their technicians has always been a priority, and we’ve been iteratively working towards this new feature for over a year now. What started as automated algorithms, that...
Harvest v1.22
HighlightsNew Billing PageBattery voltage displayedStability improvementsNew Billing PageIn addition to the “Export Transactions” button that gives customers full access to every charge and payment made in their networks, the new billing page on Harvest displays a...
Battery Longevity For Off-grid Applications
Battery health is crucial for remote off-grid solar systems.An off-grid solar system consists of batteries, solar panels, and charge controllers. Of these components, the battery is the most expensive, making it even more important to care for throughout its lifetime....
Deploying Solar Energy During a Power Vacuum in Haiti
35 rural households in Haiti quietly received 24/7 renewable energy during a national crisis.Just over 3 weeks ago, the news made headlines in Haiti: the Haitian president had been assassinated. The already tense situation escalated quickly and efforts towards...
Building Okra Solar: Afnan Hannan
Okra Solar: Start rapidly, start small and grow over time
A New Standard to End Energy Poverty
Okra is on board for the journey to provide >1000kWh/year to every man, woman and child.A study by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Energy for Growth Hub proposes a new standard to define energy poverty; they’ve set a new threshold for extreme poverty at 1000...
GPBM Industry partners with Okra Solar to implement a Lithium microgrid solution in Cambodia
Apollo v1.27
-- Apollo is our cloud service responsible for all data moving in or out of our databases, as well as handling all communications to Pods in the field (receiving sensor data, sending firmware updates, handling payment enabling/disabling logic). Apollo is named after...
Harvest v1.20
HighlightsDemo desco generatorStability improvementsDemo Desco generatorInternally, it’s important we can showcase our Harvest platform for sales, fundraising, marketing, and training purposes. Ensuring data privacy for existing customers whilst only demonstrating...
Okra Named in APAC25 List & Wins Cleantech Forum Asia 2021
San Francisco, USA | 2021.06.13< - Following the release of the APAC25 2021 list by Cleantech Group, Okra Solar has received the Judges Choice Award for showing promising traction towards creating widespread social impact for rural off-grid communities around the...
Australia Funds Renewable Energy to Electrify Rural Cambodia
2021 Market Entry Analysis
Of the 800 million people living without energy today, roughly 60% will remain unenergised by 2030 if we don’t deploy off-grid solutions at scale.The State of the Market - 2021 If you’re in the energy access space, you’re probably sick to death of hearing about these...
EXO Industry a partner of the world’s first smart DC microgram with lithium storage
Taking an indirect path into a bright future
Battery Power-Sharing
The Pod now enables transmission of underutilized battery power to wherever it’s most needed at night.It is with great pride that we celebrate one of our most eagerly anticipated features of all time: Battery Power-Sharing (we’ll refer to it as BPS from now on). BPS...
Using Mesh-Grids to Energize Rural Cambodia
Cambodia’s last-mile electrification challenge It was the goal of the Cambodian government to achieve 100% countrywide electrification by the end of 2020. Whilst the government has reduced the number of off grid villages from over 14,000 to less than 500 by extending...
GVE Deploys Okra to Overcome Last-Mile Obstacles
Meet Chris... ...a 28 year old Regional Field Supervisor working for GVE Projects Limited: Nigeria’s largest solar mini-grid DisCo (Distribution Company).The importance of Chris’ job can not be overstated; he manages off-grid electrification projects in the Southern...
Siren v2.4.2
-- Siren is our ML data engine that processes all IoT sensor data sent from Pods. It automatically identifies maintenance issues that reduce maintenance and labour costs and generates “insights” that can be found on the Harvest Maintenance. Siren is named so because...
Founders of Cambodian Based Tech Startup Recognised Again for Creating Social Impact in Asia
Phnom Penh, Cambodia | 2021.04.21 - Afnan Hanan and Damian Veling - co-founders of Okra Solar, an energy access tech startup headquartered in Phnom Penh - have been named Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2021 for enabling utility companies in Cambodia to energize rural...
Taking Over React Apps with Dodgy Dependencies
I dare you to do two things in a React codebase of your choosing: Install an innocent progress bar module npm install nprogres/nprogress Add this import anywhere in the codebase import NProgress from 'nprogress'You’ll find that 5 seconds after loading the page, the...
Harvest Mobile v1.0
HighlightsHarvest Mobile App launchedStability improvementsHarvest Mobile App launchedFrom the very inception of Harvest, we knew we needed a mobile interface to capture and assist with work being done in the field. Most of 2020 was spent building the desktop web...
What Productive Power Looks Like
How a village that isn’t connected to the national grid, is using clean cooking, selling face masks and tested e-bikes.Having reliable energy infrastructure is a fundamental step towards giving people the same opportunities that most of us already have. Without...
Pod Firmware v1.11.2
HighlightsBattery sharingStability improvementsBattery sharingThis is a huge achievement, so stay tuned for a blog post entirely dedicated to the feature. Briefly, battery sharing is the ability to leverage our power sharing algorithms all through the night to better...
The Making of a Mask Factory in the Remote Village of Steung Chrov
Building a Lightweight State of Charge Algorithm: Understanding & Implementing an Extended Kalman Filter
At Okra, our goal is to build robust and extremely reliable mesh-grid networks which maximize grid uptime, as well as battery lifespan.Why do we need to calculate state of charge? The ability to identify where energy is available in the network and where energy is...
Webinar – Turning Challenges into Opportunities for Last-Mile Energy Access in West Africa
Our first webinar We were fortunate to host Okra's first webinar on March 09, 2021. Queen Iwunwa facilitated an awesome group of panelists that dialed in from around the world to discuss their unique perspective on scaling energy access in West Africa. The full...
Unlocking New Business Models For Last Mile Households: Lesson from Asia
Electricité Du Cambodge and the Australian Embassy Visit the Last-Mile in Cambodia
How Mobile Billing Works at Okra
When energizing the hardest-to-reach parts of the world, the very act of collecting money is more complicated than it looks.Mobile money is complicated Even with the rise of so many digital banking solutions, many designed specifically for unbanked rural communities,...
Okra’s Newest Mesh-Grid Site Visited by H.E. Keo Rottanak and Australian DFAT
STEUNG CHROV, KAMPONG CHHNANG | 2021.02.16 ー A visit to Steung Chrov village - a BESD energy access site led by UNDP and MME Cambodia - was made by His Excellency (H.E.) Mr. Keo Rottanak, Minister attached to the Prime Minister and Managing Director of Electricité du...
Pod Firmware v1.10
HighlightsKalman state of charge algorithmImproved panel SMPS stabilityRefactored state machine logicStability improvementsKalman state of charge algorithmAs lithium has become the prominent battery choice going forward and we started requiring a highly reliable state...
Power to the People | UNDP
Harvest v1.15
HighlightsImprovements to overview dashboardClearer performance and grid health metricsStability improvementsImprovements to overview dashboardThe overview dashboard is designed to quickly analyze a customer’s entire portfolio, from financial performance to system...
Another Win for the Last Mile in Cambodia
The community of Steung Chrov village is transforming the way we think about last-mile electrification through their adoption of novel technology.“In my village, 77 households have been set up [with power]. This project really benefits people and there are other...
Embedding Grafana using an auth proxy with Auth0
Our web app at Okra Solar had a requirement that seemed incredibly simple but turned out to be a bit tricky. We wanted to embed a Grafana dashboard for our electricity distributor partners in Cambodia/Philippines so that they can see key metrics about their customer’s...
Pioneer Facility Signs a USD 500,000 Loan Agreement with Okra Solar for Last-Mile Electrification
Village first to get ‘smart-grid’ in Kampong Chhnang province
Once Upon a River: Ep3: Trouble on the Mekong
Pod Firmware v1.9
HighlightsBoost feature enabledSupport for AC outputSupport for more battery chemistriesImproved daily usage displayData optimizationsStability improvementsBoostEach Okra pod can individually be configured for daily limits, limiting the daily available capacity for...
Okra Solar is Bringing Clean Renewable Energy to Remote Corners in Asia
Clean Energy Week Cambodia 2020
Top 10 Frontier Technologies for Climate Action
Australia Finalist | Chivas Venture 2020
Okra | Solar technology for microgrids in Cambodia
Okra Solar’s new tech is a one-two punch against energy poverty
IoT-based Solar Energy Firm Okra Closes Funding from Schneider Electric, Japan’s GGG
Innovative, impactful projects pitched at PFAN-MI Clean Energy Investment Forum
We’re Continuing on Our Journey to Expand Energy Access
Amidst the challenges posed by Covid-19 we are happy to announce that we’ve just completed a convertible note round of funding. Investors include Schneider Electric, SADIF / MSP and Greenway Grid Global (A conglomerate of Tepco, Chubu Electric Power and ICMG...
Say Hello to Edamame, the Next Generation Okra Pod!
It is with great pride, blood, sweat and tears, that we officially announce the release of our next-gen IoT mesh-grid controller: the Okra Pod EdamameThis blog is the first of several that will examine and explore how Edamame works, the key driving forces behind our...
2020 Q1 – Wiping the Sadness Off Our Bums
It really burns that some people don’t have access to toilet paper in Australia. We feel for them and we also feel for the 900 million people who still don’t have access to electricity around the world. So at Okra we've spent the last few weeks wiping the sadness off...
Cambodia’s Energy in 2040: Security, Equity and Sustainability
San Isidro pilot | Infraco Asia x Okra
2019 Q4 – Shoutout to the Future
Quick Facts 65 % of the jobs children entering primary school today will be doing when they graduate, don't even exist yet. The highest-paid Youtube earner this year was an 8-year-old child reviewing toys & he pulled in more than $26 million. Achievements for 2019...
High-tech Makers in Shenzhen | CCTV English
Okra @ Tech23 2019
Bringing power to the people
And the winner of Hardware Battlefield at TechCrunch Shenzhen 2019 is… Okra
EBL Global Final A celebration of innovation
Open Energy Access Episode 02: Cicada, by Okra Solar
First off-grid smart solar network launched in Palawan
Bringing Scale to Energy Access – Okra Solar Makes the new 50 to Watch List
Cicada: An Open-Source IoT Communications Module for Energy Access
Reliable IoT connectivity to the cloud is a challenge, especially in remote areas with no WiFi or reliable internet connection. Connectivity is the most important component of any IoT device; without it, the device is simply a ‘Thing’. After many struggles seeking...
Okra Pilot Project in Sumba
The Okra Whirlwind – A Startup Story
To all future team members, friends, or anyone coming across our path, I hope these anecdotes begin to tell our story and reveal the captivating experience of being part of this company. My journey as a core engineer on this team has been filled with excitement,...
