Featured in Spark of a yellow sun – 07-2022

The growing pains of PayGo solar

Pay-as-you-go (PayGo) services have long been touted as an answer to the challenge of bringing affordable electricity to hundreds of millions of people currently off the grid. But the business model is not without pitfalls. In some cases, the promise of energy access has turned into a debt burden for the world’s poorest, while high-profile players have already fallen prey to the dynamics of the uncharted market. The industry is now at a crossroads and needs to find a way to strike a balance between rapid growth and customer protection.

By

Marija Maisch

18 Jul 2022

Image: ENGIE Energy Access

What started out in East Africa over a decade ago by combining increasingly cost-effective solar technology with the region’s mobile money advantages, has turned into an efficient way of bringing energy access to the bottom of the pyramid. With no upfront payment barriers, PayGo allows end users to obtain a solar home system (SHS) through …

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