Public health centers in emerging countries not only offer the much-needed healthcare services, but are also a place of refuge for local communities when a natural catastrophe (floods, earth quake) hits the region. With failing power systems during these times, these healthcare facilities are not able to support the people in any means.

Clearly energy access is quite critical to these health centers. But it is also important that these energy services are affordable and bankable, simple to use, long lasting, remotely monitored for preventive maintenance and not to forget clean. Powering these healthcare facilities with diesel genset destroys the local environment with noise and air pollution and is also expensive in the long run to maintain and operate. In case of longer outages, diesel gensets are not reliable anymore, as stored diesel is sufficient only for few hours. The energy systems should be flexible to meet the varied needs of PHCs and also scalable when needed.

One large scale implementation was done in Malawi, together with multiple partners like Differ Community Power, Zuwa Energy, USAID, and UNICEF. Modular solar energy systems were installed across 29 healthcare facilities in Malawi. Based on analysing the loads of the PHCs, it was decided that loads will be categorised concerning their criticality.

This ensures energy is always available for critical loads, no matter what. This was possible due to the energy management features of BOS solutions. Further each load had its own unique power demand, in terms of peak load. So, inverters were carefully sized to meet these requirements, without interruption.