What Arrives
A single crate, roughly the height of a person, sitting on a pallet. It fits 24 to a standard 40-foot shipping container. From the outside it looks like industrial freight. Inside it contains everything a village needs for electricity and communication.
The back wall of the crate is a structural pillar. Mounted to it — already wired, already tested, already configured at the factory — are a hybrid inverter (minimum 10 kW), a 10 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery stack, a fuse box with breakers and outlets, a metering unit, and a LoRa mesh radio with an antenna. All electronics are wall-mounted to the pillar, not floor-standing — which provides natural ground clearance against flooding and standing water. None of these need to be unpacked, positioned, or connected on site. They are ready.
The two side walls of the crate are hinged. They fold outward and upward to form a gabled A-frame roof, with aluminum rail channels running along their length. Stacked flat inside the crate, protected for shipping, are the solar panels — minimum 4 kW total. They slide onto the roof rails and clip into place. The MC4 connectors from the panel strings click into junction points on the frame that are pre-wired down through the hinge to the inverter on the pillar.
Flip the inverter switch. The LED goes green. The battery starts charging. The mesh radio announces itself to any neighboring nodes. The village has power.
What It Can Power
People hear "4 kW solar" and think small. It isn't. But more importantly, the solar array is not the limit on what you can run at any given moment — the inverter is. A 10 kW hybrid inverter can deliver 10,000 watts simultaneously, as long as there is energy in the battery. That is enough to run:
- Dozens of LED lights across multiple buildings (~5–10W each — 50 lights uses only 500W)
- 20–30 phones charging at once (~5–10W each — limited by available outlets, not by power)
- A vaccine refrigerator (~25W average — runs 24/7 on less power than a single light bulb)
- A borehole or surface water pump (200–750W depending on depth and type)
- Power tools — angle grinders (700–1,500W), drills (500–1,000W), circular saws (1,200–2,000W)
- A classroom of 20 laptops or tablets (600–1,300W total)
- A small inverter stick welder (3,000–5,000W — draws a large share of the inverter's capacity, so not much else runs simultaneously)
- Audio equipment, sewing machines, hair clippers, and other small appliances
Not all at the same time, obviously — but the inverter can handle any combination up to its rated output. The solar array determines how much energy is collected each day. How much depends on location, weather, season, and the gable angle. A gabled east/west-facing array near the equator delivers a specific yield of roughly 1,300–1,500 kWh per kWp per year — for a 4 kWp array, that is roughly 5,300–6,100 kWh per year, or an average of 14–17 kWh per day. In the Sahel or southern African highlands with higher irradiance, the yield will be higher. PVGIS simulations for equatorial Congo (latitude ~3°) confirm these figures — and show that the gable slope matters: a shallow 10° gable produces roughly 13% more energy than a steep 35° gable at equatorial latitudes, because near the equator the sun is high overhead and a flatter surface captures more of it.
The 10 kWh battery stores energy for evening and nighttime use. The inverter manages charging and discharging automatically — no human input needed.
For context, a typical rural household in sub-Saharan Africa gaining electricity access for the first time uses 1–2 kWh per day. This system generates enough to serve an entire village, not just one home.
The Space Underneath
The gabled roof is not just a panel mount. It creates a covered, shaded area underneath — protected from sun and rain. In equatorial Africa, shade is infrastructure. This space naturally becomes a gathering point: a phone charging station, a place to work with power tools, a spot where the clinic nurse can plug in a vaccine fridge, a classroom annex, a community meeting area. The power station is not just a piece of equipment hidden behind a fence. It is a place.
Why These Components
Solar Array — Minimum 4 kW
Panel format, wattage, and count are left to the crate designer — the SunCrate Prize determines the optimal configuration. The constraint is: minimum 4 kW total output, all panels must fit flat-packed inside the crate alongside everything else, and 24 crates must fit in a 40-foot container. Solar panels are the cheapest component per watt in the entire system. There is no reason to undersize them — the design challenge is fitting as many as possible into the crate.
Hybrid Inverter — Minimum 10 kW
A hybrid inverter combines the solar charge controller and the AC inverter into a single unit. Panels connect directly via MC4 — no separate MPPT charge controller, no extra wiring, no extra failure point. The inverter handles everything: maximum power point tracking from the solar input, battery charge management, and AC output to the village. Pure sine wave, IP65+ weatherproof, wall-mountable, factory-configured. One box does everything that used to require three.
The inverter must be able to start and operate with as low as 4 kWp of solar input — since that is the base array — while accepting significantly more for future expansion. This is a standard capability of most hybrid inverters in the 10 kW class.
Battery — 10 kWh LiFePO₄, Expandable
Lithium iron phosphate was chosen over lead-acid for three reasons: it lasts four to five times longer (4,000–6,000+ cycles versus ~1,000 for lead-acid), it is safer (no thermal runaway, no toxic lead, no acid), and it requires zero maintenance (no water topping, no equalization charging). The 10-year manufacturer warranty to 80% retained capacity means the battery is the manufacturer's problem for a decade, not the village's.
The stack is plug-and-play modular. Additional modules click into the existing stack with a single connector. No rewiring, no technician, no reconfiguration. Many battery stacks also support daisy-chaining multiple units, so capacity can grow well beyond the original 10 kWh as the village's needs and revenue grow.
Mesh Radio — LoRa
The mesh radio is not an add-on. It is the nervous system of the network. Each SunCrate kit includes a LoRa node (Meshtastic-compatible) with an antenna mounted at the top of the central pillar — the highest point of the structure. These nodes form a mesh: each village relays messages for its neighbors, extending range without any central infrastructure.
This communication is free. There is no carrier. No SIM card. No monthly subscription. No cell tower. No data plan. No airtime. The radio uses unlicensed frequency bands and the mesh protocol routes messages from node to node with no intermediary and no cost per message. A village can send an emergency alert, coordinate with neighboring communities, or report a system fault — all without paying anyone, ever. In regions where a single phone call can cost a significant fraction of a day's income, free communication is not a feature. It is transformative.
The mesh carries emergency alerts, inter-village communication, and system monitoring data. Where a gateway node exists (one per 10–20 villages, connected to cellular or satellite backhaul), the mesh connects to the wider world. Where no gateway exists, the mesh still works — villages can communicate with each other across tens of kilometers through relay chains.
Metering
A low-cost single-board computer (Raspberry Pi or equivalent) with current sensors tracks generation, consumption, and battery state. But metering isn't just system-level — each outlet circuit is individually metered. Village leadership can see not just how much energy the system is producing and storing, but how much each outlet is drawing. This supports transparent revenue collection: if a phone charging station uses a specific outlet, the metering shows exactly how much energy it consumed. Where mesh gateway connectivity exists, this data flows back to SunCrate for fleet-wide monitoring.
Distribution and Protection
A small IP-rated enclosure on the pillar houses circuit breakers, surge protection, and two types of outlets:
- USB outlets — multiple USB-A and/or USB-C ports for direct phone and device charging. No adapter needed. This is what most village demand looks like day-to-day — people charging phones.
- AC outlets — standard socket format for the deployment country (Type G for East Africa, Type C/E/F for Central/West Africa, etc.). For power tools, fridges, pumps, laptops, and anything with a plug. Each AC circuit individually breaker-protected.
Every outlet circuit is individually metered and individually breaker-protected. If someone plugs in a faulty device and trips a breaker, it trips that circuit only — not the whole system. Push the breaker back. No tools, no electrician. Surge protection on the main input guards against lightning, which matters a great deal in equatorial storm regions.
Deployment
- Truck delivers crate to village
- Open the crate
- Unfold the two roof frame sides upward into gabled position and lock
- Anchor the structure to the ground — drive ground stakes through the base frame mounting holes and hammer them in
- Slide the panels out and onto the roof frame rails — clip into place
- Click the MC4 connectors at the junction points
- Drive the grounding rod, clip the conductor
- Switch on the inverter
Ground anchoring is essential — a gabled structure with solar panels is a sail in high wind. The base frame has pre-drilled mounting holes. Ground stakes (included in the kit) are hammered through the holes into the earth. Simple, fast, and keeps the structure standing in storms.
| Crew | Two people |
| Time | Under a day |
| Tools | Minimal, included in the kit |
| Electrician | No |
| Training | No — show the first crew once |
| Operator | No — the system runs autonomously |
What Does Not Happen in the Field
Every field installation that involves real electrical work introduces risk. Wire a DC connection wrong and you get an arc flash. Reverse polarity on a battery and you damage the BMS. Forget a grounding connection and the next lightning strike takes out the inverter. Crimp a connector poorly and it corrodes in six months. These are not hypothetical — they are the everyday failures of field-wired solar installations across the developing world.
SunCrate eliminates this entire category of failure by moving all electrical work to the factory. No wiring in the field. No inverter configuration. No battery connection. No cable routing. No enclosure mounting. No circuit breaker installation. No commissioning beyond flipping the switch. The only electrical connections made on site are MC4 click-to-lock connectors — the same weatherproof, tool-free connectors used on every rooftop solar installation in the world.
Expandability
The base kit is a starting point, not a ceiling.
Battery: The 10 kWh stack is plug-and-play expandable well beyond the base capacity. Additional modules are purchased by the village from energy service revenue and plugged into the existing stack. No technician needed. A village that outgrows 10 kWh buys another module. Many battery stacks also support daisy-chaining multiple units for even higher capacity.
Solar: The hybrid inverter can typically accept significantly more PV input than the base array — a 10 kW inverter handles 13–15 kW of panels — well above the base array. Villages that want more generation capacity can purchase and mount additional panels. This is not part of the SunCrate kit — it is an upgrade path that the hardware naturally supports. A village with the resources and motivation can eventually run a system many times larger than what arrived in the crate.
SunCrate provides the seed. The village grows the tree.
Maintenance
There is no operator. The hybrid inverter manages charging, discharging, and load balancing without human input. The system runs autonomously from the moment it is switched on.
Over a 10-year period, the expected maintenance is:
- Panel cleaning: Rain handles most of it on a gabled roof. Occasional washing in very dusty conditions.
- Fuse and breaker replacement: If a breaker trips, push it back. If a fuse blows, swap it. Both are plug-in operations with no tools. Spares are included in the kit.
- Battery: Under manufacturer warranty for 10 years to 80% capacity. Not a village expense.
- Inverter: Under manufacturer warranty. IP65+ rated for outdoor autonomous operation.
- Everything else: There is nothing else. No moving parts. No consumables. No filters. No fluids.
Annual maintenance cost: the price of a few fuses. All major components are under warranty.
Containerization
| Minimum crates per 40ft container | 24 |
| Pallet base | Required for forklift loading |
| Loading margins | Sufficient for practical loading/unloading |
| Shipping compliance | DG labeling for lithium battery |
The 24-per-container minimum is a hard design constraint for the SunCrate Prize. It drives the maximum footprint and height of the crate. Designs that fit more crates per container are better — every additional crate per container reduces the per-kit shipping cost.
Cost
| Hardware cost per kit | ~$3,500 |
| Non-hardware (shipping, port, last-mile, deployment) | ~$350 |
| Fully loaded with contingency | ~$4,400 |
| Challenge Brief ceiling | $5,000 at smaller bulk |
Hardware cost is based on current European wholesale pricing as a conservative baseline. Actual procurement at volume from manufacturers is expected to come in under these estimates. Full cost breakdown in the budget model.