Pay as You Go, or PAYG, is a prepayment energy solar home system that allows the user to pay only for the amount of energy he consumes, thus avoiding the initial purchasing cost of the system.
The purchase, installation and maintenance of Pay as You Go systems can be made by a third parties investor (private, banks, governments…) that becomes a kind of energy distributor that sells to the users the energy produced by the solar systems.
This system is particularly convenient in developing areas of emerging economies where people do not have the economic possibilities to buy the SHS kits. These situations are very common and in the coming years Pay as You Go will have a great importance for rural electrification.
A Pay as You Go solar energy system consists of three main elements:
- Energy Hub Software: it is the central management system that records new customers and process the payments made by cash or mobile money.
- Activator Mobile Software: it is the software (or App) used by agents to register cash payments made by PAYG users. Every payment is sent via GSM to the energy hub for check and then an unique activation key is sent to the user’s mobile phone.
- PAYG Device: the solar home system can be enabled (for a proportional amount of time or energy) by entering the keycode into the keypad unit of the device.
The technology behind Pay as You Go is well tested, reliable and safe and can offer usefull features to manage clients and devices, such as:
- Information about battery charge level and other unit diagnostic data, to manage maintenance nad replacements
- Information about customers and historical data to understand how they are using their units
- Track of customer account status, payment history, and Pay-As-You-Go balances
- Possibility to run promotions and customize SMS reminders
