Selco’s solar innovations for the poor

No, not that Selco, the UK builders’ warehouse with the radio jingle. I’m talking about Selco India, another winner to profile from this year’s Ashden Awards. Selco are, at first glance, a solar company. They provide solar installations in rural locations, including clinics and hospitals – something that can be life-saving when you consider the consequences of child-birth or surgery with an unreliable electricity supply.

They also develop and sell ‘solar powered livelihood systems’, machines designed to pair with solar and empower small businesses. There’s a whole range of these, from solar powered milking machines for dairies, to pottery wheels, a rope making machine or a chilli grinder.

These sorts of things can revolutionise a small business. A farmer with a simple milking machine saves a huge amount of time with each cow, meaning they can run a larger herd in the same amount of time. It can also remove drudgery, the most boring and repetitive types of work. A solar powered blower for a blacksmith’s furnace replaces hand-operated bellows. The aforementioned chilli grinder takes over the manual pounding of chillies, a handful at a time, with a stone or wooden pole.

These sorts of machines already exist, but they’re not always suited to small off-grid solar. Selco adapts them to run on DC power or adds batteries to account for variable power. Thinking off-grid sometimes opens up new possibilities, such as this mobile photocopying service that runs off the back of a scooter, adapted to create a business for an entrepreneur with disabilities.

Technology isn’t enough in this context. In order to make their pioneering machines affordable to those that need them, Selco have to find innovative financing models as well. That’s an important part of their work, providing business loans or working with local government to offer grants. This needs presence on the ground, and Selco are committed to listening and being accessible to the marginalised communities they serve. They talk about going the ‘last mile’ and providing a service on the doorstep.

Selco won an Ashden award in 2005 and then again in 2007, which helped them to scale up. They were able to expand into new regions, and are now sharing their expertise through the Solutions Portal, and replicating their model in other locations in Asia and Africa.