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German rental solar company Redavia has begun operating two mini-grids which will serve as pilots for a possible roll-out across the country. The two 89kWp solar photovoltaic and Qinous lithium-ion battery-powered mini-grids at Isenzanya and Shitunguru villages, in the Songwe region, could serve up to 1,000 households in the area. The projects are the company’s first community-based solar container plants. 
The projects emerged after Redavia began looking for new opportunities in Tanzania following the completion of its first project at Shanta Gold’s New Luika mine in 2014.

The Ministry of Energy and Water Resources has invited expressions of interest by 22 May from consultants to support the development of off-grid renewable energy projects. The contract is to be financed by the African Development Bank through the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa as part of a project to encourage the development of off-grid renewable energy networks.

Zola Electric, the brand name of solar start-up Off Grid Electric, announced at the Global Climate Action Summit held in San Francisco on 12-14 September that it will expand into Nigeria in Q4 2018. The company is aiming to supply off-grid solar power using its pay-as-you-go system to 1m households and businesses in the country over the next three years.

In the latest partnership between a European utility and emerging off-grid solar company, Mobisol GmbH and Rafiki Power (E.ON Offgrid solutions GmbH) announced on 7 March that they were partnering to pilot hybrid grids in rural Tanzania. Rafiki is a micro-grid provider which emerged from German utility E.ON’s internal start-up incubator :agile. The pair aim to use a combination of mini-grids installed by Rafiki and Mobisol’s solar home systems (SHS) to supply off-grid customers.

The Agency for Rural Electrification (Ager) invites expressions of interest by 12 June from private contractors to develop a detailed proposal for the electrification of a dozen rural localities within the framework of the Guinea Electricity Access Scale Up Project.The localities will be electrified through hybrid systems composed of solar PV power plants with storage and diesel generators and mini-grids, and will be spread over a maximum of four zones to be finalised by Ager within the tender process.

Following the passing of a new petroleum law in early February, the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources said on 2 March it had agreed an initial roadmap to convert pre-1991 offshore concessions owned by a Shell/ExxonMobil joint venture into production-sharing agreements.The agreement is the next step towards the planned licensing of oil and gas exploration off the coast of Somalia. Officials hope that as well as indicating the commitment of the majors to the country, it raises the likelihood that other IOCs will enter the market.

Compagnie Energie Electrique du Togo plans to seek bids for the electrification of 69 rural communities. The project has received $11m of funding from the Islamic Development Bank, and only companies from member countries are eligible to bid. The contract will involve the engineering, supply and installation of electrical equipment, and the supervision of works. Lot 1, for a power network in the Kara and Savane regions, comprises construction of 251km of 20-33kV lines and 67km of low-tension lines and street lighting, as well as posts, connection equipment and prepayment meters.

Angola has published an action plan for the energy and water sectors covering the period 2018-2022. The plan aims to raise total installed capacity to 7.5GW in 2022 from 6.4GW in 2018 by expanding the role of gas and renewables, mainly solar. Tariff increases are planned in the new year in an attempt to eliminate subsidies for the power sector. Speaking at an investor roundtable in London on 14 December, energy minister João Baptista Borges said domestic tariffs would rise to around 10 kwanza ($0.03)/kWh from 3 kwanza/kWh at present.

German renewable energy developer BayWa r.e. announced on 20 June the commissioning of four solar photovoltaic (PV) diesel hybrid systems in Dakar. The project is the company’s first large solar sector project in Africa. The systems, which have a total installed capacity of 800kWp, were installed by Dakar-based Dieng & Co Engineering SAS on behalf of the government on four new ministerial buildings and on carports. Planning and supply of components was carried out by BayWa r.e., which also provided on-site support during construction and commissioning through its off-grid subsidiary OneShore Energy.

East Africa-focused offgrid supplier Mobisol has strengthened its capital base by drawing on a new senior loan facility from the Finnish Fund for Industrial Co-operation (Finnfund). The additional €10m ($11.7m) funding will support further expansion in East Africa, where impact investor Mobisol has installed nearly 10MW of capacity. Finnfund provided an earlier senior loan in 2016 to support operations in Tanzania, Rwanda and Kenya. As of June, Mobisol had installed over 85,000 solar home systems on households and businesses in the three countries, giving access to clean energy to over 425,000 people.

Renewable energy company Fenix International has appointed Jit Bhattacharya as its chief technology officer. Pointing to the trend for established executives from technology and finance companies to move into offgrid, Bhattacharya, best known for his pioneering work in electric vehicles, including energy storage systems, will relocate from Silicon Valley to Uganda. Bhattacharya has been a senior manager in Apple’s special projects group since 2014. Before that he headed Mission Motors, a technology developer for electric vehicles (including a record-breaking electric motorcycle).

The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) has made $6.5m available through its Renewable Energy and Adaptation to Climate Technologies (React) competition facility to fund small and medium-sized energy companies to accelerate access to renewable energy in rural Zimbabwe.The funds are part of the $48m released by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) to finance React projects in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa.The funding to Zimbabwe is the second disbursement by AECF in less than a year.

The Belgian development agency Enabel has launched a tender for a consultant to carry out technical and financial studies for three hybrid mini-grid sites in Zambézia province and two in Nampula. In Zambézia, the sites are the village of Alto Maganha, which has around 800 households; Namanla, which has around 1,191 households; and Idugo Island, with 2,659 households.

The world is not on track to meet the United Nations’ seventh Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030, according to Tracking SDG7: The Energy Progress Report. The report, which was formerly the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative’s Global Tracking Framework, was launched on 2 May at the SE4All Forum in Lisbon. The report is published by the World Bank with input from the International Energy Agency, the International Renewable Energy Agency, the United Nations Statistics Division and the World Health Organisation.

Local mini-grid solar provider Nuru expects to commission a 1.3MW solar plant in Goma in early January and aims to generate 8MW of power by the end of 2020 and supply power to 5m people in Democratic Republic of Congo by September 2024.Nuru chief executive and co-founder Jonathan Shaw moved to Béni in 2013 as a history professor. Faced with a local diesel generator suppling only three to four hours of power a day and regular voltage spikes of 400V, he installed a solar home system.