My first year at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm gave me something I hadn’t expected: a community. I was surrounded by people who thought about energy the same way I did — not as a technical puzzle alone, but as something with social, economic, and human dimensions. The programme didn’t just open doors professionally. It made me believe I could walk through them.

At Eindhoven University of Technology, I had to choose a department for my thesis. I joined Technology, Innovation and Society, and it felt right immediately. For me, nothing is more urgent than improving energy access for the people who need it most. SDG 7, universal access to affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy, isn’t just a policy target. It’s a measure of whether the energy transition is actually working for everyone.

I was fortunate to find a supervisor with deep experience in the Global South who helped me shape a project with real-world grounding: the second life of electric vehicle batteries in Ghana.

I had been interested in EV battery end-of-life since my first year at KTH — what happens to these batteries when they’re no longer fit for vehicles, and whether they could be repurposed for energy storage instead of ending up as waste. When I connected with a professor at KNUST in Kumasi, one of West Africa’s leading experts in e-mobility, the project came into focus.

What I found in Ghana quickly challenged my assumptions. Many of the EV challenges present there simply don’t appear in the academic literature. I had to build a network from scratch, speaking with decision-makers and with the people most directly affected by energy insecurity. During my time there, I experienced between one and three power outages a week. For me, an hour without electricity was an inconvenience. For a hospital, a school, or a food market, it’s something else entirely.

At Kejetia market in Kumasi — where you can find anything, from phone batteries to car doors to TV remotes — I saw a different kind of engineering at work. People recycling, downcycling, upcycling, finding new uses for everything. That resourcefulness shaped how I approached my thesis. My job became figuring out the right kind of ‘cycling’ for retired EV batteries: not as hazardous waste, but as a potential source of affordable, local energy storage.

The circularity is the point. If batteries that have served their automotive life can power a clinic through a blackout, that’s not just a technical solution. It’s a different way of thinking about what the energy transition is actually for.

I’m leaving Ghana tomorrow with three months of memories, new friendships, and a clearer sense of what I want to do with my career. The experience has convinced me to go further. Next year I’ll begin a second master’s degree focused on the socio-cultural and economic dynamics of global development — because the technical side of energy access is only part of the story.

The Sustainable Energy Systems Master programme gave me the foundation, the community, and the freedom to pursue a thesis that genuinely matters to me. If you’re considering InnoEnergy Masters+ and wondering whether the programme gives you space to work on what you actually care about — it does.

Thanks for reading, and don’t be afraid to dream big.