About the Community
The Challenges Behind Energy Access
Fragmented Knowledge and Tools
Across the energy access ecosystem, information and tools are frequently fragmented. Lessons from successful pilots may sit in reports or private repositories, making it difficult for others to learn from or replicate them. Teams in different regions often face similar problems but have no shared space or common structures that help them build on each other’s work.
Limited Interoperability and Standards
This fragmentation is reinforced by a lack of common standards and interoperable approaches. Different systems, devices, and software stacks are designed independently and do not always communicate well with each other, which slows down deployment and drives up costs.
High barriers for smaller actors
Smaller organisations, local entrepreneurs, and community groups can find themselves locked out because proprietary tools are expensive, licensing is restrictive, or documentation is not publicly available.
Reinventing the wheel
At the same time, the sector frequently “reinvents the wheel.” New projects may start from scratch even when similar solutions already exist elsewhere, simply because those solutions are not visible, accessible, or adaptable. This leads to duplicated effort, slower learning cycles, and missed opportunities to scale what works.
The Open Source for Energy Access (OSEA) Community exists because delivering sustainable, affordable energy to everyone is still a complex challenge. Projects in the sector often operate in isolation, solutions are not always reusable, and valuable knowledge is hard to find or apply in new contexts. OSEA brings together people who want to change that by working in the open and sharing what they build.
An estimated 660 million people would still lack access in 2030
Why Open Source Matters Here
Open Source offers a practical way to respond to these challenges. By sharing designs, code, data, and documentation openly, communities can collaborate across borders, organisations, and sectors. Instead of starting from zero, people can adapt what already works and contribute improvements back to the ecosystem.
Shared building blocks
Open repositories of code, hardware designs, and models help teams move faster and focus on real-world adaptation rather than redoing core work.
Transparency and trust
When tools and methods are open, practitioners can review, test, and improve them, which builds confidence among users, funders, and regulators.
Lower barriers to entry
Students, small companies, and community groups can access the same tools as large institutions, reducing inequality in who gets to innovate.
Better collaboration across sectors
Open Source solutions are easier to integrate, re-use, and extend, enabling cross-industry work between energy, agriculture, mobility, education, and more.
What Happens in the OSEA Community
The OSEA Community is the place where ideas are put into practice for energy access. It serves as a shared space for practitioners, developers, researchers, and community organisations who want to use and produce Open tools for real-world projects. Within the community, people connect to discuss needs, explore existing resources, and collaborate on new work that is openly documented and available to others.
Members engage around topics such as micro-grid planning, battery management, data and interoperability, business models, and community-owned infrastructure. Through this engagement, OSEA helps surface high‑quality open projects, encourages good documentation and governance, and supports the adoption of tools in different geographies and use cases. The goal is not just to publish code, but to build a culture of collaboration that makes Open Source genuinely usable in the field.
Managed by EnAccess
OSEA is proudly managed by EnAccess Foundation, an organisation known for advancing Open innovation and sustainability. Through this management, OSEA benefits from strategic alignment, reliable infrastructure, and shared values around openness, transparency, and collaboration.
