Inside PowerLabs’ quest to bring Apple-style disruption into industrial energy

From mainframe computers to Minicomputers and now to portable phones that are easy to carry around, mankind has experienced a shift from centralised and limited to  and accessible, leaving behind the old to embrace the new.

In the same light, PowerLabs, through its energy innovation, Pai Enterprise, is reinventing energy usage for industries, unifying energy sources together with an ecosystem of distributed energy resources to be cost-efficient, reliable, and value-creating.

According to the National Energy Policy of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the industrial and commercial sector is one of the major energy consumer sectors, and it accounts for about 25 percent of the total energy consumed within the country.

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In recent times, business leaders are making the tough decision to go off-grid in alignment with Nigeria’s commitment to COP26 policy for Carbon neutrality by 2060, in powering economic growth.

Even at that, most industries still rely heavily on generators to provide 50 percent of the energy required to effectively power their operations.

The tragedy that binds most energy consumers is the inability to truly cost energy from different sources in alignment with the budget committed to it, exactly why PowerLabs is relentless in its pursuit of building an inclusive energy platform.

In an article by Tobe Arize, CEO and founder of PowerLabs, titled: ‘Why We Exist: Built in Nigeria for a World Entering Energy Abundance,’ he said, “The global energy crisis provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invent, and that is exactly what we do at PowerLabs. By doing this, we help reposition the Global South from a poster child of energy poverty to one of energy abundance”.

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Tobe and his team are building infrastructure for energy consumers that combines a hardware layer, a middleware layer, and an intelligence layer to unify “…hybrid energy sources (solar, batteries, generators, grid) to work in harmony to deliver maximum uptime at the lowest possible cost with minimal impact to the environment”. He added.

Since securing it Pre-seed funding, PowerLabs, through its smart energy solution, Pai Enerprise, said it will revolutionise the commercial and industrial sectors of Nigeria, bringing ease to decision makers on energy matters, thereby providing the confidence that moves organisations from assumptions to insights, powered by artificial intelligence across their energy sources.