About Utilities 2.0:
Power for All convened 30 leaders in both centralized and decentralized energy to create a framework for electrification success at the Utilities 2.0 Bellagio summit in July 2018. Together, these leaders from the Global North and Global South developed a vision to bring grid, mini-grids and solar rooftop systems together create sustainable energy businesses and accelerate access. Ranging from Italy’s ENEL to Ethiopia’s EEU and India’s Tata Power, Bellagio participants defined Utilities 2.0 as an integrated, intelligent and interactive energy network of public and private actors, that deliver customer-centric clean energy solutions to end energy poverty. This same group of leaders have committed advance the Utilities 2.0 vision and prove that centralized and decentralized energy technologies have important roles to play in achieving universal energy access—and that these roles are bolstered by working together.

Objective:
Demonstrate how centralized and decentralized energy integration can help achieve faster, cheaper, more reliable universal access while also supporting the objectives of Umeme (and its regulator).

Theses:
- The use of integrated planning, coordinated energy markets, and innovative finance can reduce connection cost, accelerate connection pace, and improve affordability for end-users.
- The use of smart, integrated technologies can improve reliability of connections and reduce grid losses.
- The use of data and finance innovations can drive demand stimulation for all energy companies’ bottom lines and customer benefit.

Implementation
- User segmentation: Based on an agreed criteria, Umeme and Utilities 2.0 research teams will categorize user groups (e.g., by types of loads) and develop detailed mapping.
- Integrated Infrastructure: Based on customer research and site analysis, the consortia will work with Umeme to design integrated systems.
- Demand Stimulation: With Umeme, the consortia will help design consumer finance and demand-stimulation programs for testing and uptake
- Consumer Education: With Umeme, the consortia will assess consumer energy knowledge and coordinate energy literacy-building in an effort to grow support for integrated energy across Ugandan decision makers and end users.
- Regulation and Policy: In coordination with Umeme, the consortia will engage donors and key government entities for pilot support, including identifying and developing contingency plan for regulatory challenges that may slow pilot itself, as well as successful pilot results.

Follow-Up Mechanisms
- Implementation: Ongoing task force for stakeholder engagement working groups—including Umeme stakeholders, donors and other entities needed to support the pilot—are established and will be regularly updated on (publically).
- Communication: Utilities 2.0 will place a premium on sharing learnings in real-time (blogs, podcasts, videos), to build capacity and interest in the future pilots around the world--including placing Umeme on a global stage. This effort will begin by announcing the Umeme pilot.
- Evaluation and measurement: Designed at the beginning of the project, studies will include a range of technical and development studies to evaluate success of the pilot activities (e.g., behaviors, aspirations, health).

With an integrated approach, governments and utilities can make more informed decisions about how to invest scarce public resources, leveraging more private investment and thus maximize the total investment deployed in pursuit of energy access goals. In theory, the foundations of integrated planning—including comprehensive baseline studies and modeling based on GIS, population density, proximity to power infrastructure, and energy resource availability—should be able to produce the optimal technology mix to deliver least-cost, fastest-path energy access. And, given the dividends produced in education, health, and gender equality improvements (among other benefits) that result from accelerated connections to modern energy services, integrated energy planning and delivery has the potential to be one of the most powerful weapons to fight energy poverty.

Umeme—one of the Africa’s most innovative energy companies—has created a uniquely successful private utility on the continent. While Umeme’s management, customer base and regulatory framework have helped deliver one of the few profitable African utilities, Uganda’s electrification rate is only 22 percent. Simultaneously, energy off-take has failed to keep pace with Uganda’s generation growth, leading to increased pressure to stimulate energy demand across the country, to ensure profitability and long-term sustainable demand growth.

Based on grid economics, Umeme and traditional grid extension can’t solve these pressures alone. By combining advantages of traditional utilities like Umeme (infrastructure, transmission lines and poles, access long-term low-cost financing, existing customer billing and collections systems) and decentralized renewables (lower cost connections, fast implementation, fewer regulatory challenges) with targeted interventions to drive demand (financing, training, bundled services etc), we believe profitable, affordable and accelerated universal access is possible in Uganda.

By working with the Utilities 2.0 collaborative, Umeme can help demonstrate an economical model of integrated electricity access that stimulates demand, recruits future customers, and addresses energy poverty. With this pilot, decentralized and centralized energy together will catalyze the research, engineering, regulation and political will to realize faster, more affordable energy access for all. As a result of this pilot, not only will Umeme have an opportunity to pioneer the testing of such blended solutions, but Uganda itself will provide valuable vision and a path forward for all of Africa to follow.

www.powerforall.org