Featured in The energy access issue – 07-2020

Machine learning: ‘New electricity’ enabling access

Andrew Ng, a leading educator in machine learning, has described the technology as “the new electricity” for its ability to transform modern society. The roughly 780 million people globally without electricity access would happily settle for just the “old” electricity. But a growing amount of data from smart meters, satellite imagery, and other sources has allowed machine learning to play a bigger role in advancing energy access, as Dustin Zubke reports.

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pv magazine

13 Jul 2020

Image: USAID

Financing the unbanked is no small feat. But for solar suppliers, promising approaches are being deployed. Nithio, a credit-risk analytics platform, leverages socio-economic indicators – combined with customer transaction histories and other alternative data sources – to create high-resolution credit assessment models for pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar home system companies. As described by Madeleine Gleave, chief …

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