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Mini-Grid Innovation Lab: Overcoming the challenges of big data collection
Between January 2017 and December 2019, Energy 4 Impact and CrossBoundary collected, cleaned and analysed 550 million data points for the Mini-Grid Innovation Lab, using smart meters, field surveys, and financial records from 62 sites of 12 mini-grid developers. The data collection had two main objectives: tracking how business model innovations, such as tariff reduction or appliance financing schemes, affected the revenues and costs of mini-grid developers; and measuring the socio-economic development impact on the communities served by the mini-grids. This report presents lessons from managing one of the largest mini-grid datasets in sub-Saharan Africa to date.