We are committed to a culture of shared learning, innovation, and continuous improvement. Constantly seeking to serve you better, we work closely with partner organisations and strive to act on their feedback to offer a product that is affordable yet high-performing, user-friendly, and in line with the latest market trends.
More information about our current R&D projects below.
A 2-year (2023-2025), £1.35m, 6-party collaboration taking place over 3 continents. Led by Inclusive Energy and co-funded by Innovate UK, Smart Biogas 3 follows on from Smart Biogas 2 and continues the mission of digitising the small- to medium-scale biogas sector. The project includes R&D activities and aims to build several features for commercial release, adding to the Smart Biogas product family, including:
Enhanced analytics for preventive maintenance and diagnostics
More widely applicable digital Carbon Credit reporting
Enhanced sensing hardware to provide further data points
Development of metering hardware for wider use cases including larger commercial digesters.
Ultimately we seek to address financial barriers and operational inefficiencies, enabling viable biogas-as-a-service commercial models, enhancing company operations and providing additional income streams.
The project will also contribute to the literature on biogas and the benefits of digitisation through research activities undertaken by the University of Nottingham.
Project partners:
Smart Biogas 3: Digesting Data
Cool Efficiency in West Africa
This 2-year (2023-2025), £0.76m project brings together a consortium of companies that seek to provide affordable solar-powered refrigeration options to off-grid households and businesses.
With funding from Innovate UK, Inclusive Energy will work with Focus Energy and Koolboks to develop high-quality, easier-to-manage cooling services for customers in West Africa. The project builds on Inclusive Energy's remote monitoring system, Cloud Solar, and seeks to develop data modelling and machine learning techniques with both the live data and meta-data to deliver insights to providers of solar-powered refrigerators and their customers. The aim is to provide predictive maintenance for a range of issues – including batteries reaching the end of useful life and anticipating lack of energy availability based on weather data. These issues can then be mitigated with sophisticated load shedding and controls via the Cloud Solar charge controller, along with alerts for the solar system owners and providers to advise on energy saving techniques.
The project also proposes hardware development on a few fronts, including the development of a peripheral sensors unit to offer additional insights into the workings of solar-powered refrigerators, and the upgrading of our charge controller offering to a more capacious and efficient MMPT version.
Project partners:
With Support From:
Smart Biogas Carbon Platform
The project tests the use of Inclusive Energy’s Smart Biogas to capture data and sell carbon credits with 4RDigital’s digital carbon trading platform Carbon Value Exchange (Cavex). Implementation takes place in Kenya through real-life field testing with residential- and medium-sized biodigesters supplied by Africa Bioenergy Program Limited (ABPL) and Sistema.bio.
Cavex is a digital market and payments platform developed by 4R Digital and is set to revolutionise the voluntary carbon market by allowing small producers of carbon credits such as farmers and small businesses to sell directly to corporate buyers. The platform is designed to capture real-time data from remote meter devices and calculate how much carbon is being displaced or removed as a result, ensuring full transparency around the credits.
The consortium will develop a methodology and data protocol for converting smart meter data into verified offset credits for sale and determine the potential opportunity in carbon financing for metered biogas users. In addition, the pilot seeks to develop a route to market that meets the needs of all stakeholders. Ultimately, it will help improve the business case for residential and medium-scale biodigester systems through carbon valorisation, with important learnings and proof of concept beyond this project.
Project Partners:
Sustainable Farm-based Biogas Systems with Community Impact in Eswatini
This 2-year (2024-2026), £0.93m project brings together a consortium of partners that seek to develop a sustainable biogas ecosystem to provide decentralised energy solutions to rural farming communities in the Southern region of Africa.
With funding from Innovate UK, the project will roll out 100 digesters to low-income, small-scale commercial farms in Eswatini and South Africa. The project will be executed by STREEC – a local training centre aimed at equipping Eswatini youth with technical skills in renewable energy and entrepreneurship. Small commercial farms will be chosen for initial sites within a 100km radius of the training centre for ease of monitoring, training, and engagement hubs for wider groups of low income farmers to introduce the technology and understand the specific needs and value to the community. Innovation will be largely focused on technology adoption and developing a viable and sustainable business model.
Inclusive Energy's Smart Biogas meter will be used to pilot an innovative Pay-As-You-Go, biogas-as-a-service business model that removes initial capital costs as a barrier to entry for small-scale commercial farms.
Project partners:
