FG, seven firms sign MoU to power rural communities

December 17, 2020 The Federal Government on Wednesday signed an Output-Based Fund grant Memorandum of Understanding with seven private companies for the deployment of solar home systems to power rural communities. It was learned that parties in the agreement would also provide electricity to micro, small and medium enterprises located in areas categorised as unserved […]

Africa Embraces an $8 Billion Solar Market for Going Off-Grid

  Why you should care By Sophia Akram From Kenya and Tanzania to Nigeria and Ivory Coast, off-grid African communities are embracing solar energy. Desperate times call for desperate measures. So Tanzania, where 80 percent of the population has no reliable access to electricity, is planning to import biomass as fuel from Ethiopia this year […]

Solar to account for 9% of new energy capacity in Africa in next 2 years

Marija Maisch An Africa power sector scorecard shows that solar will make inroads into the African energy sector over the next two years, accounting for 9% of new capacity additions, as renewables uptake across the continent continues to grow. The proportion of new renewables, excluding hydropower, increased last year across all parts of the African […]

The Time For Home Solar Is Now

By Evelyn Huang, Sunrun, Chief Customer Experience Officer As someone who works in the solar industry, I’ve often heard “Solar panels on my roof sound nice but are simply too expensive.” This may have been the case when the technology was new, but today, there are options that make solar affordable and accessible to everyone. […]

Nigerian universities go off-grid with solar PV, storage mini-grids

Four of Nigeria’s federal universities and university teaching hospitals across the country have signed EPC contracts to develop mini-grid solutions, which will power their facilities and disconnect them from the main electricity grid. A total of 9.3 MW of PV and 5,760 battery cells will be deployed. The agreement was signed with the Federal Government […]

RE employs 10.3 million people, solar PV leads charge with 3.4 million jobs – IRE

According to figures released by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), there are more than 10 million people working in the renewable energy industry. In 2017 alone, the sector added more than 500,000 jobs globally, up 5.3 % from 2016, with solar PV the biggest employer. The solar PV industry remains the biggest employer in […]

HDB looking at expanding use of floating system for solar panels in open sea

SINGAPORE – In land-scarce Singapore, the quest to harvest more energy from the sun will soon go one step further. The Housing Board (HDB) – one of the agencies leading the nation’s efforts to ramp up solar energy use – is setting its sights on a novel area of research: the sea. On Sunday (July […]

Kenya to host IRENA renewable energy conference

In East Africa, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) has partnered with the Kenyan ministry of energy and petroleum and the Alliance for Rural Electrification to host the renewable energy…