Denis Opudo
Powerhive Company is the first mini-grid private company to be registered as a utility in Kenya. The company has been working since 2011. It provides electricity to rural and remote areas and since then it has established itself as a technology company since it is both a developer and a vendor of energy solutions. The company that is based in California provides smart metering, PV panels, cloud-based data and control platforms, and energy storage through batteries.
United States has a wide market for the PV, and this is one of the reasons why the company decided to locate its headquarters within the country. The wide market allows the Powerhive to do well since it offers electricity to homes on a relatively cheaper basis. The company was rebranded to Powerhive from its initial name Better Energy Systems which used to operate within the East African regions. Better Energy Systems was a non-solar technology, which used to operate on battery and it had a good potential of offering people with electricity for their home devices. Since the demand for electricity was high, the company had to enlarge further and rebrand to the current name.
The idea is what led to the founding of the mini-grid for the last five years into the Kenyan market. Kenya has got a larger number of people who demand electricity in their homes. The users of the system can pay their power bill by the use of their mobile phones through the use of Honeycomb software platform. The alternative is linked to M-PESA which is the leading mobile money transfer system in the country.
