Open source standardised paygo appliance communication protocol

Off-grid appliances, whether working under a PAYG plan or in-conjunction with a power generation system that has a PAYG activation mechanism, don't currently have a common ecosystem to communicate within. This typically means that each appliance manufacturer has to individually adapt its firmware code to communicate with external systems (PAYG hardware or management software). The implication is that manufacturers have large R&D expenses to enter and grow in the off-grid/PAYG sector; that the appliances provided are often limited to those provided by PAYG system manufacturers; and that appliances are locked to a single PAYG system with customers locked into a narrow appliance ecosystem. To solve this problem, Solaris Offgrid is proposing to start to develop an open-source communication protocol that would allow appliance manufacturers to adopt along with PAYG systems so that all could be interoperable under the standard. With scaled adoption, as well as providing a wider range of appliances for PAYG distributors to select from and providing a larger market for appliance manufacturers to engage with, fundamentally it would provide greater choice and better products for the end-users. Furthermore, due to the common protocol, the appliance manufacturers could also receive key data points on the usage and performance of the appliance via a software platform such as PaygOps from Solaris Offgrid.