Real Energy Access Lab (REAL) [C175]

Objective

While the growth of the off-grid solar market has driven an impressive increase in access to clean and renewable energy across Africa, an estimated 548 million people are being left behind, especially in rural areas, unable to afford or access even the basic levels of light and electricity. This is why, the Rural Energy Access Lab (REAL), has been set up to speed up universal energy access in rural Sub-Saharan Africa through an innovative Energy-as-a-Service (EaaS) model.

REAL was launched in 2024 as a not-for-profit initiative by its founding partners SolarAid, Easy Solar and Moon, who have been active in the access to energy sector in Sub-Saharan Africa over the past two decades and gained substantial experience and learnings on the sector’s peculiarities and challenges. REAL has been initiated with the objective to overcome affordability and risk barriers in the access to energy sector by developing, establishing and managing an innovative pre-electrification public-private partnership model that convenes private operators, governments, financiers, and civil society to reach common objectives. The implementation of REAL is built around the launch and operationalisation of a multi-donor facility, the REAL Facility, that will develop, seed, scale and operate country-level rural pre-electrification programs.

The REAL model is a pre-electrification mechanism that addresses access to energy challenges prior to the deployment of larger scale energy solutions, e.g., mini-grids and national grids. As such, the EaaS model is considered as a complementary solution and an additional component to countries’ national electrification plans, based on off-grid solar and renewable energy solutions. By 2030, REAL aims to catalyze EaaS projects in 10 “Hard-To-Reach” countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and deploy sustainable energy solutions to 50 million people who will otherwise remain with no access to energy. As part of the preparation activities, the project partners have launched pilot projects to rigorously test the EaaS model in Malawi, Senegal and Sierra Leone. As a key complementing component to the pilots, the project partners are actively engaging with governments officials in the three countries to design and prepare for the scale-ups of the pilots and, ultimately, to launch nationwide programs, once the REAL Facility is launched and operational.

Financing

NDF has provided SolarAid a Booster Grant of EUR 500,000, specifically aimed for the preparation activities of the initiative.