Master Micro-Utility Management in Less Than 4 Hours - Playing ELECTR!FY ၏ စာသားမှတ်တမ်းအပြည့်အစုံ

mini-grid company, right? 00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:54.560 As a player, there is a share value calculation based on the profitability of the company. 00:05:54.560 --> 00:06:01.360 And the more profitable you are, the more profit you make, the higher your share value. 00:06:01.360 --> 00:06:05.439 You can take decisions as a CEO on many things. 00:06:05.439 --> 00:06:09.199 And all these can make or break your company. 00:06:09.199 --> 00:06:14.639 One individual wrong decision can basically run you into bankruptcy, then the game is over. 00:06:14.639 --> 00:06:15.519 Over. 00:06:15.519 --> 00:06:17.279 Yeah, exactly. 00:06:17.279 --> 00:06:24.000 So, what decisions should we mention here that uh a mini-grid company player should take? 00:06:24.399 --> 00:06:27.839 Well, there are important factors to consider. 00:06:27.839 --> 00:06:29.920 One is site selection. 00:06:29.920 --> 00:06:57.759 Like we need to consider sites that are closer to major um hubs to have the highest number of PUEs that would then be able to consume electricity during daytime and also have fixed revenues, also would potentially boost income uh within the community, and then we can have like a good overview of revenue growth. 00:06:58.079 --> 00:06:59.120 Yeah, exactly. 00:06:59.120 --> 00:07:02.560 And you can take decisions on digitization. 00:07:02.560 --> 00:07:04.240 Do you want to go for smart meters? 00:07:04.240 --> 00:07:06.000 Do you want to go for prepaid meters? 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:08.160 Do you want to go for remote monitoring? 00:07:08.160 --> 00:07:11.839 Do you want to introduce a ticketing system for customer service? 00:07:11.839 --> 00:07:13.519 All these kinds of things. 00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:17.600 Um, you need to take decisions on your number of staff. 00:07:17.600 --> 00:07:25.680 And I think that is one of the aspects that many mini-grid companies struggle with because they do both. 00:07:25.680 --> 00:07:37.120 They do construction and implementation of new mini-grids and mini-grid operation at the same time in the same company under the same management, and usually with the same stuff. 00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:42.560 So, therefore, they design their staff size and number for the construction times. 00:07:42.560 --> 00:07:46.560 But when construction is over, basically what do they do with their staff, right? 00:07:46.560 --> 00:07:51.040 Oftentimes they just keep the staff, but that reduces their profitability. 00:07:51.040 --> 00:07:59.519 And with that reduced profitability, they cannot convince investors to invest and provide the finance they need to scale faster. 00:07:59.519 --> 00:08:09.920 So, therefore, yeah, um staff management and staff level management is one of the core features here in this game. 00:08:09.920 --> 00:08:11.279 But there are many more. 00:08:11.279 --> 00:08:18.720 You set tariffs, PUE tariffs and residential tariffs, and you acquire equity and debt. 00:08:18.720 --> 00:08:25.360 Equity and debt is available only once you

can show that you can run a profitable company. 00:08:25.360 --> 00:08:31.199 If you're unprofitable, then well, no chance to actually acquire any finance, like in real life. 00:08:31.199 --> 00:08:34.480 There is interim finance available for grants. 00:08:34.480 --> 00:08:42.159 So grants come usually as performance-based grants exposed, like results-based funding or results-based finance. 00:08:42.159 --> 00:08:48.159 And uh, in the meantime, you can pre-finance that grant to a certain extent. 00:08:48.159 --> 00:08:50.879 Then you can size your systems, right? 00:08:50.879 --> 00:08:59.919 You can say, I want a renewable fraction of 100%, or I want a renewable fraction of 70-50%, whatever, meeting the remaining demand with diesel. 00:08:59.919 --> 00:09:02.399 And that brings us to all the assumptions. 00:09:02.399 --> 00:09:08.879 Let me quickly run through the assumptions, and then you can also come in, Vanessa, and explain other assumptions. 00:09:08.879 --> 00:09:20.559 So, for example, we are taking care of foreign exchange risk, diesel price development over time, price elasticity of demand when it comes to tariff setting. 00:09:20.559 --> 00:09:22.720 We consider economies of scale. 00:09:22.720 --> 00:09:31.360 So if you import larger numbers and deploy larger numbers of systems, your specific price of the individual component gets reduced. 00:09:31.360 --> 00:09:37.440 We have impacts of digitization on staff requirements. 00:09:37.440 --> 00:09:39.919 We consider customer satisfaction. 00:09:39.919 --> 00:09:56.639 So if electricity customers are unsatisfied because your staff level is too low or your system doesn't deliver electricity reliably because the system is too small or whatever, then the willingness to pay and your revenue after all will go down. 00:09:56.639 --> 00:10:15.519 We calculate the average revenue per user on a continuous basis, and we basically simulate the whole game over 20 years, like the whole mini-grid company over 20 years, and those that have the highest share value in their company will rank highest on the leaderboard. 00:10:15.519 --> 00:10:16.240 Right? 00:10:16.240 --> 00:10:29.279 And we have seen players who actually turned $1 million of starting capital into $100 million, $300 million over 20 years. 00:10:33.840 --> 00:10:44.399 Yeah, definitely it's a very interesting game to play since you get to see how your decision making affects your profitability in real time. 00:10:44.399 --> 00:10:50.879 And uh, you've already mentioned a few of the assumptions we make in the game. 00:10:50.879 --> 00:11:13.759 And I wanted to just jump back on the relationship between the number of staff and the digitization, because I think it's interesting that you mentioned that, since we can also see in real time in the game how digitization, like adopting ticketing, for example, would help reduce the amount of staff by a certain percentage. 00:11:13.759 --> 00:11:21.840 So these additions, I would say, that a mini-grid company could adopt that would on the long run reduce its OPEX. 00:11:21.840 --> 00:11:22.960 Exactly. 00:11:23.200 --> 00:11:28.000 Yeah, and another effect that I have not mentioned yet, is uh clustering of sites. 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:33.600 Like if you select sites all across the country, then your travel costs will be very high. 00:11:33.600 --> 00:11:35.440 We could we calculate travel costs. 00:11:35.440 --> 00:11:39.360 Yeah, meaning that uh your profitability is probably lower. 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:50.240 If you cluster properly, if you select large sites, if you select sites that are close to trade-ups, your demand, electricity demand will increase, your ARPU will increase quite rapidly. 00:11:50.240 --> 00:11:52.559 That will help you become profitable. 00:11:52.559 --> 00:11:57.200 We're selection of sites is definitely the core of any mini-grid company. 00:11:58.000 --> 00:11:59.039 Yeah, definitely. 00:11:59.039 --> 00:12:00.000 I agree. 00:12:00.000 --> 00:12:04.159 Also, for the sites, the data used from uh Vida. 00:12:04.159 --> 00:12:09.039 So the sites actually have their own characteristics. 00:12:09.039 --> 00:12:15.360 You see the wealth indication, for example, you mentioned the distance to trade hog and all of this. 00:12:15.360 --> 00:12:33.279 So as a player, you kind of already have a feel of what the site could be like, how maybe profitable in terms of number of connections, in terms of the demand overall per year that the site would consume. 00:12:33.279 --> 00:12:47.120 And also you mentioned the renewable energy fractions where you get to choose if you want more diesel, if you want more renewable energies, if you want to oversize your system to account for potential growth. 00:12:47.120 --> 00:12:52.240 All of this you can see how it affects your investment, it affects your system size. 00:12:52.240 --> 00:13:01.679 And also talking about diesel, like we have fluctuating prices of diesel overall uh during the simulation time, so the 20-year simulation time. 00:13:01.679 --> 00:13:10.799 And you also see how the rise and fall in diesel, if you have a highest share of diesel, would then affect your overall profitability. 00:13:10.799 --> 00:13:12.320 Yeah, exactly. 00:13:12.559 --> 00:13:22.320 And um, what we need to say is that this game is currently simulating using the Nigerian data. 00:13:22.320 --> 00:13:25.200 If you go there, you will see a map. 00:13:25.200 --> 00:13:33.759 A map of Nigeria with thousands of dots, and each of these dots is an actually unelectrified village. 00:13:33.759 --> 00:13:43.840 And that makes it most exciting from my point of view, because it's not some artificial game where you play in an artificial environment. 00:13:43.840 --> 00:13:47.840 It's basically real data that you're playing with. 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:54.320 It is actual village data, and we try to keep it as close as possible to reality. 00:13:54.320 --> 00:14:07.840 Uh, we are using the data from the

Darius planning activities that we had supported earlier a few years back, and we now converted it into this game. 00:14:07.840 --> 00:14:12.720 Well, similar data is available nowadays uh for other countries also. 00:14:12.720 --> 00:14:20.559 And the main player here is of course Vida, uh, which collects all these data, and um, thanks a lot to Vida. 00:14:20.559 --> 00:14:25.039 We can use this data for our game. 00:14:25.039 --> 00:14:28.320 So, yeah, it's almost like in real life. 00:14:28.320 --> 00:14:30.399 Yeah, almost yeah. 00:14:30.399 --> 00:14:39.120 Vanessa, let's look into the use cases of the game a little bit more closely. 00:14:39.120 --> 00:14:46.240 So we already talked about the three types of user groups that we foresee. 00:14:46.240 --> 00:15:00.559 On the one hand, the regulators and policymakers, on the other hand, the entrepreneurs and graduates from university, and the third is investors and financiers. 00:15:00.559 --> 00:15:04.879 And I would say the fourth is, after all, the mini-grid companies themselves. 00:15:04.879 --> 00:15:09.919 Let's start with the mini-grid companies themselves, and then maybe we can come back to the other three. 00:15:09.919 --> 00:15:16.320 So, mini-grid companies nowadays actually train their management staff on the job. 00:15:16.320 --> 00:15:31.440 You hire a person, and there is not much experience in mini-grid management in the talent market, you basically just onboard that person and give him exposure to the challenges while he's actually taking decisions. 00:15:31.440 --> 00:15:36.639 Which may not be such a good idea in the long run. 00:15:36.639 --> 00:15:40.159 Maybe it's better to provide some upfront training. 00:15:40.159 --> 00:15:56.240 And now with this simulation that we developed, any mini grid company could just pick a talent, expose her or him to the game, tell that person, play. 00:15:56.240 --> 00:16:12.399 If you're unsuccessful, come back to me, ask me questions why you're not succeeding, I will tell you how to improve, and then step by step make that talent understand what it actually takes to run a mini-grid company successfully. 00:16:12.399 --> 00:16:18.480 So I believe that this could change the way staff training is happening in mini-grid companies. 00:16:18.879 --> 00:16:27.279 Yeah, definitely I agree with you, Nico, also because the game gives you the opportunity to actually lose. 00:16:27.279 --> 00:16:34.879 And by that I mean that we know that when we're playing a game, we always want to have the highest possible score. 00:16:34.879 --> 00:16:40.720 But in real life, we know that we might be confronted to unforeseen circumstances. 00:16:40.720 --> 00:16:50.879 So, for example, by selecting the community with the highest number of customers, you are sure that you have a substantial demand. 00:16:50.879 --> 00:17:10.000 Whereas you could also decide to test what happens if you select a community with a low number of customers and try to play around with the

parameters to eventually see how far you can go with this community, if you can eventually make it profitable at some point or not. 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:13.839 And if you can't, what are other things to play around with? 00:17:13.839 --> 00:17:26.799 So it's not just about winning the game or playing the game for the pleasure of it, it's also a learning experience to know what to do when things don't really align with how you want them to go. 00:17:26.960 --> 00:17:29.119 So yeah, that's very nice indeed. 00:17:29.119 --> 00:17:40.880 And what we have to say here is that in this simulation of the Nigerian mini-grid market, not only MetroGrid strategies can be successful. 00:17:40.880 --> 00:17:54.799 Um, the Nigeria Daris program provides higher ground levels for smaller villages, and that makes smaller villages also financially feasible to a certain extent. 00:17:54.799 --> 00:18:00.319 But of course, we must admit that MetroGrid strategies are always the most profitable ones. 00:18:00.319 --> 00:18:04.720 But yeah, you can try this out, you can test it and then see. 00:18:04.720 --> 00:18:11.599 And also for investors, this can be an opportunity to see what strategies they want to promote. 00:18:11.599 --> 00:18:15.440 Do they want to go more for impact-driven electrification? 00:18:15.440 --> 00:18:19.759 Do they want to go more for profit-driven electrification? 00:18:19.759 --> 00:18:21.039 What is their strategy? 00:18:21.039 --> 00:18:23.680 What risks are they actually taking? 00:18:23.680 --> 00:18:26.319 And which companies do they want to work with? 00:18:26.319 --> 00:18:31.359 They can find out for themselves by playing this game, learning more about how the sector works. 00:18:31.680 --> 00:18:32.720 Yeah, exactly. 00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:48.160 And also um having an idea probably of the types of investments and subsidies that would be required to electrify either one or the other communities where one is impact-driven or one is business driven. 00:18:48.160 --> 00:18:50.480 So, yeah, I guess they're gonna review. 00:18:50.799 --> 00:18:56.559 After all, the aim would be to create or improve the investor confidence. 00:18:56.720 --> 00:18:57.039 Yeah. 00:18:57.279 --> 00:19:04.960 To make sure that investors know what they're actually investing in, which at the moment may not be the case in all cases. 00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:16.640 So, all right, now we've talked about mini-grid companies as players or company staff as players, we've talked about graduates a lot, and we talked about investors and financiers. 00:19:16.640 --> 00:19:28.240 Now let's touch upon policy and regulation a little bit and how regulators and policymakers can benefit from this game. 00:19:28.640 --> 00:19:29.279 Yeah. 00:19:29.279 --> 00:19:41.759 Government and policy regulators are not usually aware of the realities of the terrain, if I can put it that way, of the environment. 00:19:41.759 --> 00:19:51.680 And there is quite a mismatch between what they expect as regulators and what uh mini grid operators actually experience on ground. 00:19:51.680 --> 00:19:59.519 So playing this game, which is, as we mentioned, based on real data and can actually simulate. 00:19:59.519 --> 00:20:10.160 real life events can help regulators and government entities understand actually the realities from uh an operator's point of view. 00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:34.880 And things like tariff settings, which are usually on the lower end and uh make it harder for the operators to actually reach break even, could then be pushed a little bit higher without affecting so much the customers and still making the mini grid business profitable while keeping good customer satisfaction. 00:20:35.200 --> 00:20:47.920 Yeah and there is still a subject that people think they know but oftentimes they don't really factor in the effects of price elasticity of demand. 00:20:47.920 --> 00:20:55.759 And I think this is another unique opportunity here to really experience what price electricity of demand actually means? 00:20:55.759 --> 00:21:01.440 Like what does it mean if you increase your tariff for residential customers? 00:21:01.440 --> 00:21:04.400 What does it mean to increase your tariff for productive users? 00:21:04.400 --> 00:21:15.920 What does it mean to increase your tariff for productive users beyond a level where diesel or petrogenerators could generate electricity at similar cost, even at lower cost? 00:21:15.920 --> 00:21:25.119 What does it mean to increase tariff levels to a range where the solar home system may be more affordable? 00:21:25.119 --> 00:21:49.119 These kind of things can be experienced here in this mini grid game because we put the assumptions from all our learnings over the last 20 years into this and seeing how it all plays out and how one aspect affects the other is actually a learning experience even for me right when playing the game I thought okay wow where is this effect coming from now? 00:21:49.119 --> 00:21:50.720 Where is it coming from? 00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:57.279 And I in some cases I even needed to think some minutes about okay hmm why did I lose what happened? 00:21:57.279 --> 00:22:18.319 And then after a few minutes I said ah okay well it was I don't know price elasticity or it was too much or not enough staff or it was a digitization decision that I took wrongly or it was the selection of sites or it was simply taking the wrong finance at the wrong point in time. 00:22:18.319 --> 00:22:22.400 Like there are so many mistakes you can make as a mini grid company CEO. 00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:27.920 But yeah you can learn how to overcome and to avoid these mistakes with this game. 00:22:27.920 --> 00:22:29.759 Yeah. 00:22:29.759 --> 00:23:02.880 Good now recently we've talked to World Bank SMAP AFDB CIFA and GetPro which is running getInvest and getTransform and they all really like the idea of this game and they like the game itself and they like playing it and they like the opportunities

that this game brings along and they said they would love to support it and make it something that people actually use to the benefit of the sector. 00:23:02.880 --> 00:23:08.400 And one of the ideas that were discussed was to run a competition. 00:23:08.400 --> 00:23:31.680 A competition between players and there may be several groups maybe a group for professionals from mini grid companies there may be a group for university graduates and entrepreneurs that are new to the sector there may be a group for government and regulators and they may be a group for investors and financiers. 00:23:31.680 --> 00:24:07.359 And each of these groups may play with their respective perspective and maybe even we come forward with some group specific challenges that these groups may need to perform and then after all we will find those who perform best and those best performing players may potentially get a price of whatever that may be a service from getInvest or from AMAP 2.0 or some support for policymakers through SMAP or something like that. 00:24:07.359 --> 00:24:24.559 Let's see that that has not been decided yet we're all thinking about it we're brainstorming still but it's very likely that something like this will be developed and uh yeah to all our listeners get prepared maybe you want to take part in that competition. 00:24:24.880 --> 00:24:37.920 Yeah it would even be interesting to have a group with all three sectors playing together and seeing how uh each decision that it decides to make affects the overall results. 00:24:38.240 --> 00:25:03.680 Indeed yeah yeah very cool idea all right with that outlook let's jump into some recordings from an Inenzus internal electrify battle okay once I get the draw yeah are you learning I mean I'm I'm learning a lot from the side you're going bankrupt you're going bankrupt Silva you're going bankrupt yeah what shall I do? 00:25:03.680 --> 00:27:34.799 Well at the moment there's no option anymore what so I'm gonna post the game until someone else crash before me thanks everyone because I've been bankrupt already three times so without telling us without telling us now I see Emma you are cash flow positive congratulations thank you yeah and 900 connections you got an uh equity and debt offer what are you taking okay so if I look at the offer whoa what you're doing 57 dollar cents per kilowatt hour for productive users that's crazy that's what I charge keeping not 100% customer service but up to 80% customer satisfaction all right all right if the customers are paying hey who cares who cares there's no regulator here wow Hogar has a super cluster developed around Sokoto yeah 30 connections uh connections 6000 yeah but all small all small towns are all small villages uh jacob is cashing in grants is that a good strategy jakob for now yes let's see let's see how sustainable it will be oh 24 cents per kilowatt hour for households that's very kind of you yeah I'm uh very social many now you have that debt offers tiptoe yeah does that sound attractive to you it's a bit too the interest is a bit too high for the Nigerian one is only five years so I'm thinking if I should accept that or not to fire some people so customer satisfaction is going down revenue is even further going down but the cash flow is not going up yeah it's going up and also I would craft them yeah bankruptcy three months re to recover okay what's your thing wow Jacob you have one two three four five six villages under construction and your bank account is at bankrupt I'll try to Emma if you if you were a banker would you give a loan to someone who has a negative cash flow? 00:27:35.039 --> 00:28:30.960 Of course not alright oh Thomas game over oh what was what went wrong Thomas I think I got impatient and went yeah spent too much money yeah impatience is never good now Holger you're starting again yeah so Sokoto is challenging Sokoto is indeed very challenging game complete now you can put your name I did it this episode of the Mini Grid Business has been brought to you by INENSUS your one-stop shop for sustainable mini grids for more information on how to make mini grids work visit our website inensus.com or contact us through the links in the show notes the mini grid business powered by INENSUS