Smart Villages Research Group Ltd

Our project addresses challenges and opportunities in rural electrification, particularly for remote Orang Asli communities in West Malaysia. Despite the country's considerable urban development and high electrification rates, about 200 of these villages remain under-electrified. A critical challenge in deploying distributed systems in communities is asse...

In an EnergyCatalyst7 project, SVRG with Ugandan partners developed a game-changing approach to rural energy-access, economic-empowerment and agricultural-productivity. The SmartAgri-Centre(SAC) combines a50kW centralised solar-power plant with an integrated set of community productive use and agri-value-addition services, in a large central community hub...

Our project, REAP (Renewable Energy Agro-Processing) hub, is a transformative initiative aimed at empowering rural communities by providing sustainable access to renewable energy and enhancing their food production capacities. Through the integration of innovative technologies and community-driven approaches, we seek to create lasting social, economic, an...

SVRG and OMASI collaborated on a Energy Catalyst 9 grant on a project in Tanzania to develop technology to encourage communities to make their regular repayments for solar borehole power systems, by being able to cut off power in cases of non-payment. Preexisting diesel generators are on site, so there is no question of the communities being without water...

This is a combined ElectricalStorageSystem (ESS) and SolarWaterPumping project. It will supply 24/7 power and water to 2 hospitals and 1 school in selected countries. We are combining the service to the institution with community based water kiosks, and the earnings from water sales will pay for system upkeep and cover lifetime replacement costs. The inno...

A typical village in rural Uganda might have 225 houses, consume an average of 0.3kWh per day from a minigrid, and require 8km of distribution infrastructure (poles and cables) to connect all the spread out houses. The village in the UK in which we are based has 1250 houses, consuming (conservatively) 10kWh a day, and requiring just 4km of (identical) dis...

From 2019-2022 in NorthernTanzania, SVRG and OMASI collaborated on an EnergyCatalyst6 grant to bring innovative integrated-energy-services and productive-use technologies to marginalised Maasai communities. The project has been a great success, with innovative solar-energy and productive-use technology installed at 5 boreholes (displacing diesel-generator...

PAY-N-PUMP is an innovative smart digital pay-as-you-go water-pumping and irrigation solution for small scale farmers in Uganda, built in a push-cart format, developed by Aptech Africa Ltd in an Energy Catalyst 7 project, in partnership with SVRG. Despite COVID-delays, more than 65 systems have been piloted, and farmers have observed crop-yields and house...

ECOSMART:2 will demonstrate the smart integration of a novel, enhanced anaerobic digestion (AD) process with solar technology to form the basis of a circular economy model, providing affordable, clean, secure energy access. Through development and operation of the ECOSMART:2 modules, new integrated UK-Nigerian enterprises and supply chains will be establi...

In order for rural communities in the developing world to access productive uses like welding or flour milling, they require access to minigrid-scale power (typically \>10kwp). Yet minigrids are notoriously commercially unsustainable, due to the capital expenditure required, and difficulties in efficiently matching loads and supply throughout the day and ...

Our original project aimed to show how creating a Farmers' Enterprise Centre (which would include cold storage services, facilities for value-addition to crops like milling or juicing, and other agriculturally-related services) in a rural offgrid community in Uganda could act as an anchor load, improving the commercial performance of a minigrid in that co...

In this project, we will carry out a feasibility study to develop and test a prototype device which at low cost can monitor the detailed performance and power levels of all stages of offgrid energy systems of the type which are installed in rural commnities in Africa and elsewhere in the world. The problem with these is often that data is difficult to obt...