Projects
We develop sustainable energy and community projects. Expeditions, tools, Field Notes, design and engineering all exist to help those projects happen, and to make them better.
How it fits together
Projects are the job. Everything else helps them happen.
Some of it goes into the projects directly. The rest is how we learn, tell the story and find the people to build with.
Core business
Sustainable energy and community projects.
We develop them from first idea to a system that people own, run and earn from.
What we bring to a project
Engineering and design
System design in local context, BESS design and optimisation of existing systems, built around real loads and the people who will run them.
Business development and models
Finding customers, partners and the next step, and testing tariffs, ownership and operating models against real prices, so a project earns its keep once the funding ends.
Project management
Planning, budgets, partners and delivery, so a good design gets built and handed over.
How we learn, share and grow the network
Expeditions
Going to see what works. Storytelling and marketing for the projects, and knowledge and contacts for the next ones.
What they are for →Tools
Working models we use on our own projects and publish, so you can stress-test them too.
Open the tools →Field Notes
What we learn, written down with sources, failures included. Guest writers welcome.
Read Field Notes →In the pipeline
What we are working on.
Each project shows which building blocks it uses, and the stage label says where it really is.
Gambia e-tuktuk pilot
Electric tuktuks as cleaner, more reliable transport in the Gambia. Green-Up Gambia is developing the local business case, and our E-Tuktuk Profitability Model stress-tests the numbers.
Solar Tuktuk Rally
Three solar-powered tuktuks from the Netherlands to the Gambia, about 7,500 km in two to two-and-a-half months. The plan is to hand them over to the Gambian pilot on arrival.
Netherlands to South Africa
The next line on the map: an idea before it is a route. We will publish it properly once there is more than a vehicle idea.
Your project
Building a community energy project where the grid is unreliable, especially in Africa? Tell us what you are building and where you are stuck.
Expeditions
What the expeditions are for.
An expedition is a working trip with two jobs. It is never a holiday with a good story.
01
Storytelling and marketing
A journey people can follow gives a project a face, an audience and partners. Every stop becomes a Field Note, photographs and a pin on the live map, published as it happens.
02
Knowledge and network
Being on the ground shows what works and what fails, and puts us in front of the people already building. What we find goes into the tools, the Map and the next project.
The filter for every stop
Community-led or community-owned.
Turns energy into livelihood, and does more than deliver electrons.
Technically honest about what works and what does not.
Open to being documented and shared.
Work with us
Got a project, a route or a reason we should talk?
If you run an NGO, an energy company or a municipality, or you are starting a sustainable energy project where the grid is unreliable, tell us what you are building and where you are stuck.