A startup’s plan to sell solar like cell phones | Hacker News Reader

A startup’s plan to sell solar like cell phones

gigaom.com

14 pointsFluidDjango11 comments

From a marketing perspective this seems absolutely genius.

From an engineering perspective, it seems completely backwards. The coupling between the actual cost of the system and what the user pays is minimal: drawing more power doesn't actually increase wear on the solar cells. Really, all they have done is wired a meter whose sole purpose is to waste electricity if the user isn't paying.

If it works, and if it successfully brings electricity to people who would really benefit, I can't argue with it. It just seems so very wrong from an engineering perspective.

Doesn't this model work for cell phones because they are really cheap and the provider doesn't care if they get lost/stop paying? Afaik solar panels are expensive to make so how does this make any sense?

A 50W solar panel isn't all that costly (150-200$). This model is just a way to 'loan' these devices for consumers who can't afford even those. You will be surprised by how much utility these small capacity solar panels might provide even for those Indian consumers connected to grid (if they provide 2 lamps/ 1 fan as mentioned). This is because in rural areas, power cuts of around 8 hours/per day are very common.

I wonder what their overhead is for going to rural areas to install/service these devices.

Probably not too bad since labour costs in rural areas are very low. I'm not sure what they are now, but unskilled labour used to be about $3 a day. I remember when I was in India seeing guys climbing telephone poles with no safety equipment whatsoever, just raggedy street clothes and flip flop sandals.

Curious how they would keep them from not just ripping off the meter?

I'm sure there are technical ways of preventing the system from working if the meter is tampered with.

I wonder why they chose a pay-as-you-go system depending on how much energy they use.

I think this would be much better as a rent-to-own program with a flat monthly fee.

Seasonal work, summer hours, school and other needs take precedence over what a family spends money on, on a month-to-month basis. Pay-as-you-go electricity is common in some western countries and it is not unusual for there to be days where the family cannot afford to top-up until pay-day again, where food etc comes first as a primary need.

Cell phone can be cut off at anytime so as making it easy to link its access to continuous payments. The company has little leverage against the cell panel users due to non-payment.

These look like pre-paid power-minutes or something similar. So you pay for 500 minutes of power, and when you've used it all the power stops. When the solar panel knows when you've paid for however many minutes are required to "own" the device you stop having to buy minutes for it.

So they could run the risk of people just not paying for the device anymore because they can't afford or don't want it anymore, or tamper with it to try and get it working without paying it off. They'd still have the 10% initial fee plus any minutes they paid for already.

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