Aina works as an engineer at Nanoé, a social enterprise whose main activity is the provision of electricity and employment access in rural areas.
Nanoé came to Ambanja in 2017 and continues to progress in other areas of Madagascar. Now they have five agencies and two offices to manage more than 3000 nano-grids country-wide.
The nano-grid consists of 4-6 clients sharing a connection to a Nanoé controller made in Madagascar. It is powered by a photovoltaic solar system installed in the house of one of the clients.
The micro-grid is the second stage of electrification. It consists in interconnecting nano-grids in a town to obtain a better, more reliable service in order to install new and more powerful electricity offerings.
What are your professional background, your technical expertise and your areas of interest ?
I am an electronic and industrial informatics engineer. I graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique of Antsiranana in 2017.
Before joining Nanoé, I was working as a volunteer teacher at the Lutheran Protestant School in Marotolana Ambanja and as a service provider in an NGO in Diego.
In August 2018, I started working at Nanoé in Ambilobe as a technical field technician for 3 years, then plant manager for another 3 years.
Now since September 2024, I am based in Ambanja as a micro-grid project engineer.
Why did your company join the project?
Because it is an innovative enterprise, it always seeks to improve its services and to grow in order to provide electricity to remote villages.
Due to the remoteness of our 3000 installations, hardware issues on our installations are one of the major difficulties we encounter. First, the client calls us to report an issue, then the nano-entrepreneur or the technician needs to go and see the relevant area in order to gather data and issue the first analysis. If the issue cannot be resolved on the ground, data has to be taken to the office for an extensive analysis with the plant manager. Together, they will be able to conclude if it relates to a hardware problem and which piece has to be replaced. The nano-entrepreneur in charge is designated to operate the hardware replacement on the ground. Therefore, for just a hardware piece replacement, this causes a response delay which often we cannot meet.
How is your experience in R&D and engineering informing your current work within the project?
I have created survey forms on KoboCollect. I have conducted technical sizing, data analysis and commercial market research. I take part in the writing of survey forms to harvest data on field requirements and to size the electricity needs for any upcoming offering.
Post-set-up, I take part in the harvesting and analysis of usage and energy transfer data.
On the commercial front, I usually conduct primary studies and offer my point of view.
How do you hope you will benefit from participating in the project and its outcomes?
I wish my company to take part in and benefit from the project by:
- providing my technical expertise
- ensuring the good roll-out of electricity grid set-ups
- facilitating communications between Nanoé, nano-entrepreneurs, new vendors and clients
- contributing to the improvement of interconnection units (SoC estimator)