Browsing: Solar power in Africa

This decision comes at a time when South Africa is still struggling with catastrophic power outages and is also attempting to transition away from its reliance on fossil fuels. Causing businesses to steer clear of relying on Eskom, the struggling state-owned utility of the country, for their electricity needs.

Eskom blackouts can last up to six hours, which causes production delays and damages sales.

Eskom, the troubled power corporation responsible for providing most of South Africa’s electricity, has had a challenging time keeping the lights on for many years and has been forced to apply load-shedding to prevent the grid from collapsing.…

Africa is one of the sunniest continents in the world, 85 percent of African land receives more than 2,000 kilowatt-hours of solar energy per square meter per year. Almost 70% of the population of African countries is located in the Sahara and the surrounding areas do not have access to the grid.

With the need to hook up to the grid, a new partnership is moving towards achieving more solar power for the industry. Kenyan industries are set to benefit by saving a minimum of 30% on their current cost grid consumption following a partnership between Distributed Power Africa (DPA) and Canadian Solar company. Currently, Kenyan companies lose nearly 10% of their production because of power outages and fluctuations.

The deal is expected to help DPA provide top tier PV panels from the company that is estimated to be over 60,000 KuMax and HiKu which would quite easily construct 50 …

Rwanda’s solar energy ambition received an endorsement of a financial instrument from the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance.

According to the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance, the first boost will be US$ 9 million and will enable the deployment of solar home systems for 175,000 households

The institution approved the piloting of solar securitisation, which seeks to improve the financial capacities of developers to enable them to expand and meet the demands in the local market.

Rwanda targets to connect 300,000 households annually to the off-grid energy solutions if it is to meet the 2024 access target which will contribute up to 48 per cent of national electrification.

Among the challenges include the fact that the systems are financed by customers whose sales have been relying on the solar developers’ ability to leverage their own balance sheets which are often constrained.

The firms have often found challenges …