NFE Checkin - November 7th 2026

Agenda 

• Updates on Customers
  • WH 
  • Kampala Club 
  • Sezibwa 

Meeting transcript attached. 

Minutes

Attendees: Aaron Tushabe, Dansturn Kimbowa, Hillary Arinda (joined after the Kampala Club report). Dansturn was unwell and left at the end. Agenda: customer updates (Kampala Club, Worship Harvest), Sezibwa, AOB. Source: Tactiq transcript (attached to this page).

Decisions

1. Kampala Club: confirm the problem and the bills before investing more. Send a formal email requesting three months of bills and usage history, and hold an online call with Jethro (head of IT and security, the day-to-day contact) early next week.
2. Data collection: two weeks at minimum, one month is ideal, three months is better, ideally covering both a wet and a dry season or the site's known peak. Long bill history can stand in for metering for the economics.
3. Worship Harvest: slow down and win over the facility team, not only Apostle Moses. A synchronous meeting with Rodney (facilities manager), with Aaron and Hillary joining.
4. Explain the business model plainly: energy as a service. NFE invests, the customer provides space and security and agrees to buy power for a period. Don't lead with "we will get funders".
5. Sezibwa control: design first, then build. Write the rules down as a design ("if X, switch SBU to Y"), then implement them so the controller decides at runtime instead of a pull request for every change. Look at what OpenEMS's built-in controllers offer first.
6. Learning from every customer interaction is worth more than a quick sale at this stage; reflect weekly on what customers said and update the product.

Discussion

Kampala Club (Dansturn's visit, 6 Nov)

• Dansturn met Michael (General Manager) and Jethro (head of IT and security). Michael asked Dansturn to work with Jethro from now on.
• Pain points (Jethro's words): the monthly power bill, which they consider too much; and the wiring is poor. The club has two three-phase meters and two generators (about 40 kVA and 20 kVA). The smaller generator serves the lower side, which has the heavier load (pool, sauna, pumps), and the larger one serves the offices and IT. IT needs reliable power around the clock for the servers.
• Unclear: whether the bill figure covers both meters, which tariff code the meters use (10.2 or 20.2), and what "too much" means to them.
• They have expansion plans (a site model showing new buildings with roof space for panels), plenty of paid parking (a possible EV-charging site), and a hotel tenant on site. Michael suggested the Sheraton next door as a prospect (a large power user).
• They asked for NFE's profile and evidence of past work: where we found losses and how we improved reliability.
• Jethro was interested in our data-first approach and asked for all requests in writing.

Worship Harvest

• Dansturn is talking to four or five people; only Apostle Moses replies. The others leave messages on read.
• Hillary: the facilities manager (Rodney) controls the fuel budget and is the person who must see the value. If only the Apostle sees it, that is a red flag. Proposals land better in person, with someone talking through the graphs, than as a document.
• Hillary asked for a one-page version with graphs, not tables of numbers.
• Aaron: a fast "yes" from the top is a risk if the team on the ground doesn't understand the deal (roof space, security, a long-term power agreement). Questions raised after equipment is on site are expensive.
• Generator sizing: Worship Harvest's generator is 200 kVA. Property managers tend to oversize, and meter codes give an incentive to under- or over-declare load, so measured data matters.

Sezibwa (Hillary)

• The goal is profit without hurting reliability. Solar has averaged about 8 kWh a day, against about double that possible: the panels are under-used.
• What was learned: the inverter's preset modes can't be "set and forget". SBU suits a reliable grid; with frequent cuts, cuts and charge windows have caused dawn and evening outages. The night charge was cut to 30 minutes so the sun fills the battery.
• Needed: a controller that decides (the "brain"), with explicit conditions, not just a goal. Aaron: a documented design first, possibly an OpenEMS driver before MGM, and look at OpenEMS's schedule controllers.
• Alerts: the outage emails have stopped. They are sent from a nearlyfreesoftware.com mailbox, which Aaron connected by mistake instead of NFE's own. Aaron will fix it and put customer outage alerts first.

Sub-metering and new leads (Hillary)

• Evans Twinamatsiko (Pandora Meters): a former classmate running SMS and mobile-money aggregation, now selling Chinese STS prepaid sub-meters. Hillary asked for documentation and whether the meters speak Modbus. The interest is in meters with relays, so we can control them, and longer term DLMS/COSEM, which helps with certification. The prices look reasonable; how we communicate with the meters is the open question.
• The laundromat lead has moved premises. Contacts for both the old and new locations are coming.
• A new lead: a contact's 18-unit building on postpaid sub-metering. Get the bills and talk to the landlord or facilities manager. 18 units is below the 50-unit residential guide, so it depends on the bill.

Aaron's updates

• Major refactoring in MGM. On the open metering design, he asked EnAccess and others whether NFE can be paid as a developer; they will reply next week. AMDA asked NFE to audit; NFE prefers the developer role if it is paid.
• Customer leads now tracked in the accounting system's CRM. He will add the leads from these minutes and assign owners.

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