The ReadySet power station. Photo: Peter McCollough/Wired
Last week, a peculiar little box called ReadySet blew up on Kickstarter. Designed to provide electricity in the field and off the grid, ReadySet is a portable power station that can be charged via solar panels and other clean energy sources.
It blasted past its fundraising goal in just a day, but while it’s new here in the States, it’s been juicing phones, laptops and even lightbulbs by the thousands in Africa for more than a year. But it doesn’t just generate electricity — it also fuels the incomes of a growing number of entrepreneurs, farmers and mobile bankers. Whatever you do, don’t call it philanthropy. This little do-gooder is all about making money for the citizens of developing nations. The box doesn’t come cheap, but its return on investment can change lives.
Encased in plastic, ReadySet is about the size of a shoe box, and it stores 54 watt-hours of power in its field-ready battery pack. It has four charging ports in the front — two USB slots, and two 12-volt car lighter adapter ports to power up devices.
On the back side, positive and negative terminals let it connect to just about any power-generation source. It comes with a solar panel for tapping the energy of the sun, and a wall plug that connects it directly to the grid if you need a fast refill. But the genius of ReadySet is that you can connect it to anything: a windmill, a water wheel, a car battery, and, perhaps most importantly, a bicycle. (One of its accessories is a trainer-like kit that will charge up the box when you pedal a bike atop it.)
For thousands of Africans, it is nothing less than a light in the darkness.
San Francisco-based Fenix International, the company behind the ReadySet, had its roots in the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project. Company founders Mike Lin and Brian Warshawsky had previously worked at a start-up that was focused on developing off-the-grid power solutions for OLPC. But they realized there was a more immediate challenge: getting electricity to the hundreds of thousands of mobile phone users who didn’t have regular access to grid electricity.
“When we were working on that $100 laptop, we realized that the way most people in the developing world go online would be to leapfrog [over laptops] with phones and smartphones,” Lin told Wired. Yet while huge swaths of humanity may have access to a 3G signal, they may not have a power outlet. And that discrepancy has led to a cottage industry of car batteries and diesel generators, and other dirty, destructive sources. This was a revelation to Lin and Warshawsky.
“We saw a huge need that wasn’t being well-served,” Warshawsky says. The solution was a device with smart power management features — for example, a system that wouldn’t power all the way down to stone cold dead, or charge up too rapidly, both of which can hurt a battery’s longevity. The team also wanted a device that could be filled up via clean energy sources. “We didn’t know what it would look like, or how it would work exactly, but we had a clear insight into the need,” Warshawsky said.
Photo: Peter McCollough/Wired
And it has to be a moneymaker, because despite being designed for poor people in the developing world, the ReadySet won’t come cheap. And it’s not a giveaway device subsidized by an NGO. Fenix is a for-profit enterprise, and the ReadySet and its associated accessories are its only shipping products. Want one? Each box costs $150 retail — and that’s in Africa.
“We don’t think poor people can afford cheap products because they can’t afford to have things break on them,” explains Lin. “Why don’t we have things that are well-built that will let them pay it back?”
To this end, Fenix optimized for the field. The plastic box is ruggedized, designed for monsoon seasons and hot, dusty environments. The 15-watt mono-crystalline solar panel has an aluminum frame to toughen it up, and although it’s pricier than a multi-crystalline panel, it also delivers a faster charge. Still, in places like Uganda, where the per capita GDP is only $1,300, $150 is a seriously large investment.
The only way to make the pricing work is by turning the ReadySet into a self-contained business, promoted by mobile carriers in the developing world. When it was ready to roll out into Africa, Fenix began seeking out mobile operators with a pretty simple pitch: We’ll make you more money.
“Our hypothesis was if you enable people to keep their phones on, then they’ll generate more revenue,” says Lin. They argued that customers would use more minutes and data if they had better access to power. If the closest charge is in the next village, people are more likely to switch off their phones. Turn them back on, and they start gobbling up more services, which in turn means more money for the carrier.
The hypothesis worked. South Africa’s 100-million subscriber MTN Group began promoting the ReadySet “business in a box” in its stores in Uganda, and its in talks with other carriers to do the same.
Over the past year, some 2,000 entrepreneurs have bought the kits, often assisted by micro-finance loans. This has created a small network of micro-utilities, if you will, who charge 25 cents a pop to charge up a cellphone. Fenix says the typical mom-and-pop power shop earns about $40 per month in revenue, and sees about another $10 saving on top of that in reduced energy costs. At that rate, the upfront micro-finance loans (The Grameen Foundation, which provides capital to micro-lending institutions, was an early partner) can be paid back within three to five months.
And the boxes are being used in all sorts of novel ways, too. They’re powering egg incubators, for example, and people are coming up with unforeseen ways to generate power to juice up the boxes. Our favorite: a donkey walking in circles to turn a turbine.
This atmosphere of innovation helps explain why Fenix is on Kickstarter, where you’re usually more likely to see a prototype than a shipping product. The company wants to make ReadySet more accessible, open to more uses, and more attractive to potential entrepreneurs in the developing world. And it decided one of the best ways to do that is by getting the device in the hands of hardware hackers in the developed world. Fenix is hoping to turn some of the solutions people come up with back around and into Africa — and eventually Asia, South America, and the rest of the world. It’s a powerful idea.
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