Street vendors’ income and profits are directly impacted by their lack of access to reliable lighting during the 4-5 hours after sunset, as well as by their lack of access to cold storage, which impacts the freshness, quality, and spoilage of their perishable goods.
India Switzerland Social Innovation Camp
Solar Mini-Kiosk
Creating a modular Integrated Energy Center that can easily be used as an add-on service
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Hélène PortierDesign, EPFL+ECAL Lab
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Yasmine BenkiraneBusiness, HEC
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Andres EngelsTechnology Management, EPFL
How might we scale up SELCO integrated energy centers?
The current model of Integrated Energy Centers was identified as being capital intensive and not scalable enough because it relies on the delivery and collection of solar-powered batteries on a daily basis.
After a series of iterations, we proposed the decentralization of the IECs as a family of portable needs-specific, self-service mini-kiosks.
These kiosks are to be financed, managed, and stored by petty shop owners, thus leveraging their existing infrastructure and prevalence. Our solution is rapidly deployable and less capital intensive, achieving a faster payback period for the investor.
Optimizing the mini-kiosks size, weight, development and material cost will be crucial for its success.
As next steps these concepts should be tested with a self-service generator-powered mini- kiosk in a community facing these needs, before developing and designing the solar kiosk.