We intend to build a first of a kind test and demonstration Community Cooling Hub (CCH) unit at the ACES campus, Kigali. It will specifically provide pre-cooling, storage and freezing for food and storage of vaccines and medicine for veterinary and human use plus eutectic pack “charging” (freezing) for mobile transport. But it will test and demonstrate additional transformative services - food lockers will be provided for the local community to enable them to store food, thermal services for food processing, electric vehicle charging. It will also even test how a CCH can support the local community through air conditioning of facilities. Such an integrated hub that uses all resources efficiently is completely novel and has never been built before.
Pioneering a System of Systems
Success will be dependent on optimising the whole system of systems integration. We are developing advanced control systems and algorithms for both real-time energy management, ensuring optimal energy use, minimising waste, and forecasting across energy availability, energy storage, demand and short-term weather/climate forecasting. The programme will also require non-technical elements such as (i) understanding the social impacts (including unintended consequence of deploying the cooling hub); (ii) creating novel business models viable at the community level and empowering women, youth and marginalised communities; (iii) catalysing user engagement to ensure broad adoption and sustained impact; (iv) identifying policy interventions that foster sustainable and inclusive cooling practices and (v) building local capacity to replicate and scale the CCH concept.
While a totally inventive concept, it is our ambition that it will become a generic design moving forward as systems are installed and demand pull will drive local manufacture and assembly. We will specifically look to develop a design tool to guide the creation of future CCH facilities tailored to specific local needs. We will also use the test bed to develop and evaluate novel business models and financing mechanism, including service aggregation and pay per impact models, that ensure the affordability and financial viability of the cooling hub.
Why are we doing this?
No matter how appropriate a shift in philosophy might be, clean cold-chains will only be taken up by small and marginal farmers if they are affordable within the local economic context. To achieve this, we need radically innovative business models which economically empower the marginal and small farmer - and create rural employment and resilience, in alignment with the existing human backdrop and current on-the-ground reality. In developing economies, this can be driven through empowered Farmer Co-operatives or Farmer Producer Companies (FPCs) or Village-level entrepreneurs.
By combining a systems-level view of such community cooling needs, with new “shared value” business models, we believe that Community Cooling Hubs (CCHs) can affordably meet various rural community cooling needs, providing a scalable pathway to efficient capacity utilisation of a financially viable, accessible, low-carbon cold-chain and cooling development that serves to generate not only economic wealth but also better healthcare and nutrition in a sustainable manner. It can act as the physical hub for the community whilst also providing
Market intelligence for short and long-term decision making;
Cascade point for communication and training;
Holder, communicator and implementer of market engagement quality standards and regulatory compliance requirements;
Trading platform and financial transactions participation pivot;
Produce aggregation, order fulfilment and logistics pivot point;
Produce transparency and traceability hub;
Market feedback conduit and continuous improvement catalyst;
Market entry gateway for farmer community.
In addition to the development of local installers and service companies, the CCH will also support local manufacturing and ensure that facilities are correctly supported and maintained.
What are the wins?
Currently the cooling needs of different user groups in a rural community are typically addressed and delivered independently in silos e.g., vaccine cold-chains, food cold-chains, building and mobile AC etc. An integrated Community Cooling Hub (CCH) has the potential to address diverse community cooling needs in a more efficient, affordable and sustainable way.
The approach involves a commercial utility, i.e., the cold-chain, being leveraged in a locale as a foundation for building an integrated system to support and deliver humanitarian, social and development goals.
Integrated systems of systems approach for community cooling:
- Focuses on all social and development goals and built on community-ownership.
- Aggregates demand and supply to optimise system efficient energy and resource management.
- Mitigates demand through passive cooling, service aggregation and behaviour change.
- Stacks (bundles) revenues in business models to maximise economic opportunity.
- Supports the formation of farming clusters and the development of sustainable and commercially viable Community Cooling Hubs that integrate farm-level aggregation and onwards connectivity hubs.
- Catalyses local manufacture and assembly.
Overall system design can consider in an integrated approach:
- Environmentally friendly location close to sustainable modes of transport;
- Clean energy sources for transport;
- Thermally efficient, well-insulated building with passive cooling approaches and sustainable cooling technologies;
- Minimum, convenient and efficient movement of humans and materials;
- Optimisation of use of energy and water;
- Application of low GWP refrigerants;
- Disposal and re-use of waste;
- Lifecycle Analysis of building structure, materials and equipment for lowest environmental impact;
- Affordability and socio-economic impacts and benefits;
- Regulatory environment and incentives;
- Business and finance models and trading platforms.
ACES will provide far more than technical demonstration
Alongside the technical solution, the aim of the CCH (Community Cooling Hub) project is to deliver real impact to rural communities by delivering a fully integrated plan including training, support, production, economic models and equipment. Equipment that is common in the rest of the world is still hard to maintain in-country and spare parts are impossible to obtain locally. The ideal solution to the cooling needs in Africa would be a technology that could be replicated and manufactured in-country rather than imported. This means a more bespoke design at this stage and combining and testing solutions that are not off-the-shelf. By designing, developing and delivering a system that can be replicated in-country, we believe we can deliver a sustainable and positive impact that has long term sustainability for local communities and businesses.
It is important to develop the local skills and training and to provide and develop equipment that is specifically designed for the local markets and can be operated and maintained by local people. This can only be done initially by developing bespoke equipment that is fit for purpose and can ultimately be a replicable product built locally. Our aim is to develop and build a bespoke CCH that can be tested at the ACES site in Kigali. The CCH will be tested and optimised to provide CCH designs that, while complex in their integration, can be can be straightforwardly manufactured locally, which will flexibly fit the needs of local communities. As part of this initiative local technicians and manufacturers will be trained to be able to replicate systems. This not only develops local skills and training but ensures long-term sustainability and self-reliance within the community.
Phased Build
While it is important to understand and design the total solution, it is planned to be built in phases during 2025.
Phase one will include solar generation as the lowest cost of entry renewable generation, but later phases will add in other waste streams, such as biomass for anaerobic digestion, to create a centralised hub for a no-waste economy. These future integrations must be planned for during the initial design and works for phase one. Business models should also consider how the hub could benefit everyone, this could include in phase one cooling as a service where individuals or groups may buy ice or rent refrigerated space by volume, everything from a small locker to store vaccines, up to an entire walk-in cold store.
Looking more to the future development of the site within the community, logistics should be considered, such as charging for electric cycles or motorcycles could enable the community to travel and trade more widely. As it grows, the hub shall become more central to the community, fostering food production, processing of surplus produce into juices or preserves, logistics and even markets shall build around it – all supported under its PV electricity generating roof.
We will be hosting a webinar in early 2025 to explain more. In the meantime, for more information, please contact [email protected].