Rajan Kundra is Director of Capital Markets & the Energy Portfolio at Acumen Fund. He recently attended the Overseas Private Investment Corporation’s Renewable Energy & Clean Technology Conference in Delhi, India.

I just returned from the OPIC renewable energy conference in Delhi, where it was amazing to witness how the renewable energy movement in India is at the intersection of so many things that matter – climate change, sustainability & resource management, new investment areas, and addressing global poverty.  Most of the conference attendees were geared towards the “more commercial” set, but the conversation did really steer across all of these areas.

There were 2 big take-aways that resonated well with some of the work that we are doing – First, the traditional fund structure of 5 year investing periods and 10 year exits will not work in many cases – the projects just get delayed by nature, the capital needs are significant for several years (unlike other sectors where they are more front ended), and the market of “aggregators” that can take a series of renewable energy projects and roll them up is an exciting but not yet fully developed sector.  Our notion of Patient Capital really hit a chord here – and while Acumen Fund’s direct focus on Poverty was interesting but not the core focus of of everyone there, the way in which we use Patient Capital was of interest.

Second, an interesting conversation on “big” vs “small” energy projects was led by Acumen Investee Gyanesh Pandey of Husk Power Systems.  So much of the scale conversation is about very big energy projects – how one can make a dent in the global climate and energy scarcity problems with megawatt and gigawatt scale projects. The trickle down assumption in these conversations is of course that these large projects will create energy access for the poor.

By contrast, Gyanesh told a very exciting story of how Husk’s systems are purposely small – about 50 Kilowatts, just enough to meet the demand of a small village cluster. Gyanesh explained how Husk Power Systems has used the small scale to innovate around low cost delivery and infrastructure to make the energy affordable, and how they have made the business model replicable to the point that they already have 26 systems up and running today. Cumulatively, these put out 1.3 Megawatts of electricity, which is the sweet spot for some of the larger systems. Finally, Gyanesh’s model was compelling because of the sheer speed at which their systems are set up, each taking less than a month.

I sincerely applaud the decision of OPIC to have included Husk and Acumen in this debate.  It was a tremendous learning experience for us and a very exciting time for the entire sector.