Powering up communities in remote areas

Energy storage solutions company GenPlus was founded in 2013 from a need for portable power.

Yong Jun Yuan
Published Mon, Nov 29, 2021 · 05:50 AM

MOST people may be surprised to learn that the idea for GenPlus was born in a McDonald's outlet.

It all started out of a need for portable power when managing director Lim Ming Chiat and his co-founder spent their days working out of the fast-food restaurant after they had left their previous jobs.

In order to stay at the restaurant for an additional 5 to 6 hours, they wired 2 lead acid batteries to an inverter to power their laptops.

"We just put everything into a small bag and hit it, but people were wondering why there's all of our computer wires going inside there. Someone actually asked (about it) . . . and that rang a bell," Lim said.

He recalled the times when he had previously done on-site design works to create solutions for clients of a previous startup where he worked. They lacked access to a proper power supply, and diesel generators were too cumbersome to use.

Thus, GenPlus was founded in 2013 as an energy storage solutions company, providing smaller 2 kilowatt-hour (kWh) storage solutions that could power a fridge for 40 hours at a time.

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Within 3 to 4 years, the company had grown to provide for capacities of up to 100 kWh, equivalent to powering 2 households for a day.

The falling cost of batteries has helped the company expand its offerings and reach out to more clients, with battery costs falling to be about a quarter of what it was when it was founded.

With cheaper prices, GenPlus has been able to pitch its storage solutions together with renewable energy sources such as solar panels to help reduce its clients' reliance on fossil fuels, particularly for clients who needed to power equipment that was further away from the traditional grid.

For instance, the company has supplied its solutions and solar panels to communications tower operators in isolated places such as plantations.

As these towers tend to be far from the grid, they run on diesel generators with 1,000 to 2,000 litre tanks of fuel.

GenPlus helps to install solar panels around the communications tower. Then, batteries are installed to store excess energy when more solar energy is generated than is required by the towers. At night, these batteries then release their excess energy to power the tower.

While the system still requires the diesel generators to kick in when solar energy is weaker, Lim noted that using solar power has halved the amount of time that the diesel generators need to be turned on, thus reducing the number of trips that the operator needs to make to refuel them.

Ikea-like approach

Because such solutions tend to be most useful for communities living further away from the grid, GenPlus takes on projects high up in the mountains and on remote islands in countries such as Papua New Guinea and the Philippines.

In order to get to such locations, Lim said that the team has had to redesign their solutions to be broken down into smaller modules so that locals can transport their products more easily to be installed on site.

Furthermore, because of international travel restrictions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the company has not been able to go to these overseas locations to oversee their installation.

Instead, they have had to adopt an almost Ikea-like approach towards the design of their storage solutions to ensure that they remain safe for laymen to install.

For instance, the company has adopted finger-proof plugs to ensure that installers will not accidentally come into contact with exposed leads. Plugs are also colour-coded to ensure that they are plugged in correctly.

"You want to make it very intuitive and at the same time, safe, because you don't want to leave the thing to be installed by somebody who forgets to put 2 very important screws and then in the end the whole thing collapses," Lim said.

As Singapore looks to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles by 2040, GenPlus also sees a business opportunity in the form of used battery cells in electric vehicles.

Modern electric vehicles have hundreds, if not, thousands of battery cells packed into them. However, they do not wear down evenly and some of these cells could still be reused in second-life energy storage systems.

While commercial owners may not not buy such second-life systems due to their shorter lifespans, such systems may see more usage in back-up or microgrid settings.

Microgrids are an area of interest for the company, especially as other South-east Asian countries grow rapidly and require solutions to bring electricity to more remote locations.

"You see our neighbours, they are growing very aggressively but sometimes, the grid itself will take some time to build so that gives us some opportunity to look into these aspects, especially for islands," Lim said.

"There are a lot of opportunities, it is an exciting industry to be in at this moment and there's a lot of growth (potential) too," he said.

 

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