How Bitcoin Brings Light to a South African Primary School

Over the weekend, the MIT Enterprise Forum hosted a conference focused on new developments in clean energy distribution and how blockchain technology could play a major role in the future of the electric grid.

The event was sponsored by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a government-funded agency that promotes clean energy expansion in the state, and featured speakers from IBM, startups Consensys, LO3 Energy and Grid Singularity.

Perhaps the most popular topic of the evening was Usizo, a crowdfunding platform designed to facilitate energy payments between donors and South African schools, which was first announced last fall.

Grid Singularity CEO Ewald Hesse was in Boston for the presentation, while Lorien Gamaroff, CEO of blockchain startup Bankymoon, connected with him via Skype from Emaweni Primary School in Soweto, South Africa, nearly 8,000 miles away.

As Gamaroff points out, the nature of energy in South Africa has changed over the years, with local users only able to use electricity if they paid in advance.

For example, if a homeowner wants to exchange 1 day's worth of electricity for their home, they need to go to an approved supplier, pay them, and they will then provide a special voucher that can be stored in the smart meter, and the lights in the house will only turn on after the transaction is completed.

Gamaroff said such systems could be expensive, especially for people living in rural areas, and would rely on a third party to act as a middleman between the user and the power company.

“Prepaid payment systems make electricity more expensive because of the infrastructure that is required, and the travel costs, which makes these payment methods very expensive,” Gamaroff explained. “If you are in a remote area and your lights go out, there is no way to pay for it. There is no easy or electronic way to do that.”

In this case, he continued, the problem could be solved by using digital currency, explaining:

“You now have a smart meter, a meter that’s powered by the bitcoin blockchain, and donors abroad can send money directly to this meter, without having to send it to an organization, or have those funds be redistributed.”

Smart Payment

Using digital currency to prepay electricity bills is not a new concept. As early as 2014, Gamaroff was involved in a previous project aimed at facilitating South Africans to prepay their electricity bills using Bitcoin.

However, the new effort takes a philanthropic approach, channelling international aid through its crowdfunding platform structure.

As Gamaroff and Hesse demonstrated, the project involves two components: 1. A smart meter that accepts digital currency; 2. A crowdfunding platform where donors can donate Bitcoin;

Gamaroff shared some photos on Twitter from a previous MIT conference showing how such a smart meter would be installed:

Donors can use the platform to see how much electricity a school consumes in a given period of time and calculate how much BTC is needed to pay for that electricity.

Live Demo

For the demonstration at MIT, Hesse transferred 1 BTC to the smart meter in Soweto, an amount that will power Emaweni Primary School for about three weeks.

Meanwhile in Soweto, a large group of school administrators, teachers and staff were left in darkness (midnight local time) waiting for the return of electricity.

“Now what’s happening is that this transaction is going through the blockchain, the meter is going to accept this payment and it’s going to calculate the amount of electricity that needs to be delivered to the load,” Gamaroff explained during the demonstration.

Despite some delays, the system eventually worked successfully, the lights in the school came on, and there were applause and cheers from the crowd.

The future of the project

So what actions will the Usizo project take next?

Hesse revealed that Usizo is not just a test, and its future may involve the management of some non-governmental organizations (NGO structures). Hesse said that this project has aroused active interest from these parties, although the specific transition time has not yet been determined.

For educators in Soweto, this platform can bring them electricity and help these students continue to learn.

Original article: http://www.coindesk.com/south-african-primary-school-blockchain/
By Stan Higgins
Compilation: Overnight porridge
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/south-african-bitcoin ‎)