Decentralized Electric Utilities (DEUs) and Solar-Home-System distributors (SHS-D) are increasingly emerging to reach and serve deep rural unelectrified communities in the global south (mainly in Africa and Asia). These DEUs & SHS-D are required to handle a vast and complex range of technical (e.g., energy, power, etc. ) and financial data points from their operations daily. Particularly, domestic small and midsize entrepreneurs find themselves hands-tied in their quest to digitize and optimize their operations, allowing them to scale and reach more unserved rural communities. The integrations with different energy asset communications and the integrations with payment providers (e.g., mobile money, which is widely used) come with significant efforts for these small-size companies. Therefore, we see an enormous value (in supporting bottom-up, locally driven rural electrification) in the provision and maintenance of the Open Source MicroPowerManager, where all those integrations and interopearbilities need to be set up only on time and benefit a variety of domestic companies and initiatives. Also, the operational and business models of the different DEUs and SHS-D are generally slightly different. The core processes are the same, and the Open Source MicroPowerManage software provides all the required basic functionalities to ease these processes.

In the presentation, we will dive into the current technology setup of the Project, both organizationally and technically. We want to shed light on the MicroPowerManager, its current functionalities, feature pipeline, particular technical and community-building challenges, and other possible use opportunities. We hope to have fruitful exchanges and interesting feedback from the community; maybe one or the other wants to support our journey.