A Nigerian Energy Tech company, Beacon Power Services, announced that it has closed $2.7m seed round led by by Seedstars Africa Ventures with participation from Persistent Energy, Factor[e], Kepple Africa Ventures, and Oridun Capital Management.
Launched in 2014 by Bimbola Adisa, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Beacon Power Services (BPS) provides data and grid management solutions for Africa’s power sector. Its mission is to significantly enhance energy access for Africa’s cities while its goal is to improve the quality and duration of electricity supplied to Africa’s cities by creating smart grids across the continent and using data to reduce the considerable inefficiencies in the electricity distribution systems.
The funding will allow the company to enhance its product offerings, support growth in its current operations and expand beyond Nigeria and Ghana.
The company has developed an AI-enabled smart grid platform, Adora, that provides real-time visibility on network performance for electric utilities. Adora connects to every utility asset and customer node on the grid, allowing energy providers to preempt outages, identify network losses, and distribute electricity more efficiently.
“Africa is home to the fastest growing cities in the world, but when most people think of energy access in Africa, they think of the rural areas with little or no access to electricity at all. However, it is impossible for Africa to develop without significantly improving electricity access and reliability across its major cities,” said Bimbola Adisa.
“When we realized that solutions designed for mature markets fail to address the unique infrastructure challenges Africa faces, we developed a tailored solution for power companies on the continent to improve daily grid supply of electricity. We have helped our utility clients reduce network losses significantly, recover unrealized revenue and improve electricity reliability for over 30 million consumers and businesses. Most importantly, our technology is having a real impact on sustainable economic development and climate change in Africa by reducing the continent’s reliance on diesel generators,” he added.
“As a society, we have recognized climate change as one of the biggest threats to our generation, and it is critical we use smart capital to support entrepreneurs across Africa who are creating innovative and localized solutions to tackle this challenge,” said Maxime Bouan, Managing Partner at Seedstars Africa Ventures. “The BPS team has demonstrated success in partnering with Africa’s power companies to deploy data driven solutions that are relevant to their specific operating conditions. We recognize the significant economic, social and environmental impact of this technology that innovatively solves affordable electricity access. We are excited about the potential to support the team’s expansion to continue to disrupt power access and reliability across the continent.”
