Search results

French energy giant Engie claims to have become the market leader in off-grid solar in Africa following the acquisition of Germany’s Mobisol. When the transaction closes, which is expected in October, Mobisol will join solar home system company Fenix International and mini-grid developer PowerCorner under the umbrella of Engie’s distributed power business. The company has been aggressively targeting the market with the intention of being able to provide the full range of electrification options to emerging countries.

The Agence Sénégalaise d’Electrification Rurale invites expressions of interest by 10 October from consultants to assist with the planning, procurement and supervision of a rural electrification project to supply 177 villages with mini solar PV plants.

InfraCo Africa announced on 27 August that it had signed a shareholders’ agreement with PowerGen committing $6.9m to developing the Sierra Leone Mini-Grid Project. The project will build 41 solar PV, battery and diesel hybrid mini-grids, establishing 12,500 new connections. Of these, around 85% will be households and 15% small enterprises and public institutions. PowerGen was selected to implement the project following a tender run by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), under the umbrella of the Rural Renewable Energy Project (RREP), which is funded by £35m ($43m) from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfID).

The Ministry of Power, Housing and Works, one of the so-called super ministries established in President Muhammadu Buhari’s first term, has been broken into two and a new power minister appointed. Although former minister Babatunde Fashola was not disliked, some in the industry are hopeful the change could result in renewed focus on fundamental issues and end personality clashes at the top of the ministry. The ministry was put under Fashola’s control at the height of his popularity in 2015 following an eight-year stint as governor of Lagos State.

Liberia’s Rural and Renewable Energy Agency (RREA) invites sealed bids by 25 October for the design, supply and construction of the 2.5MW Kaiha 2 small hydropower plant on the Kaiha River, near Kolahun, in Lofa County. The contract is to be financed by the World Bank under the Liberia Renewable Energy Access Project. The hydropower plant is the pilot project of the World Bank scheme, which is designed to expand access to electricity in remote areas and to promote the use of renewable energy, while reducing the use of imported fuel.

African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), a member of Old Mutual Alternative Investments, announced in late July that it has reached final close on its third African Infrastructure Investment Fund (AIIF3). The fund raised $320m, making it one of the larger private equity funds on the continent, where the average fund raise is around $230m, according to Preqin Infrastructure Online’s 2018 Global Infrastructure Report. AIIM has already committed AIIF3 funds to nine projects and expects the fund to be fully committed within 18 to 24 months.

CrossBoundary Energy Access (CBEA) has announced a debut transaction that will see 60 mini-grids providing power to 34,000 rural households and businesses developed in Tanzania. The deal is the first project financing for a mini-grid, according to CBEA, part of the CrossBoundary Group, which is partnering with PowerGen Renewable Energy for the project. PowerGen was founded in 2011 and has built mini-grids serving more than 50,000 people.CBEA, which describes itself as the first project financing facility for mini-grids, started up this year with $16m of funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and family office Ceniarth LLC.

As well as developing the regulatory and legislative environment, the government has produced significant planning documents to guide developments in the power sector. The overarching strategy is laid out in the 207-page Angola Energia 2025, which includes demand planning, priority generation, transmission and distribution projects, energy mix scenarios and a resource atlas. Medium-term strategy is guided by the 2018-2022 Action Plan for the Energy and Water Sector.

The government signed an agreement with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on 9 July to develop 90MW of solar power under the Scaling Solar programme. Togo is the sixth country after Zambia, Senegal, Ethiopia, Madagascar and Uzbekistan to join Scaling Solar, the IFC said.The accord follows an initial agreement signed in 2017, under which the IFC funded studies of potential sites and the absorptive capacity of the national electricity grid.

Ethiopia released the second iteration of its National Electrification Programme in March, a 216-page document setting out the government’s least-cost approach to reaching universal access to power by 2025. The plan envisages 65% of customers being on-grid and 35% off-grid. Off-grid would then be phased out by 2030, leaving only 4% of the population off-grid, to be replaced by grid extension, which the government expects to be the least-cost option for all households by 2025.

Symbion Power and San Francisco-based Natel Energy have launched a new hydropower-based mini-grid company called MyHydro which aims to install hydropower-based mini-grids at low cost but on a large scale. MyHydro will use low-head turbine technology provided by Natel which the company claims are “the most fish-safe turbines in the world” and which require a water drop of only 2-10 metres. MyHydro aims to deploy a minimum of 150 installations with associated mini-grid infrastructure in Africa by 2025, serving around 1.5m people.

Investors led by Japan’s Marubeni Corporation have made a $26m investment in UK pay-as-you-go solar company Azuri Technologies. Azuri, which has offices in Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, said the capital infusion would enable it to accelerate expansion in existing sub-Saharan Africa markets and roll out its solar lighting, TV and additional services into new markets. Azuri has sold more than 150,000 solar home systems and has adopted a comparatively cautious approach to building its business.

Solar home systems (SHS) pioneer Mobisol has entered self-administered insolvency proceedings at the District Court of Charlottenburg in Berlin. The move announced on 18 April gives the management three months to turn the company around and conclude negotiations with prospective investors that began at the start of the year. Mobisol has been operating since 2011. The news came soon after German off-grid company Solarkiosk AG announced that it had filed for insolvency and hoped to restructure during preliminary proceedings.

Wärtsilä has signed an engineering, procurement and construction contract to build a 48MW gas power plant supplying Bua Group’s Sokoto cement plant in northern Nigeria. The plant will run primarily on liquefied natural gas (LNG) with low pour fuel oil as a back-up. Wärtsilä has been targeting the thermal market in Africa with its integrated gas power and LNG regasification technology in recent years.The power plant will supply a new cement line at the Sokoto facility using five Wärtsilä 34DF dual-fuel engines, complementing two heavy fuel oil (HFO) plants already operating at the site, which is entirely off-grid.

Société Nationale d’Electricité du Burkina (Sonabel) is seeking expressions of interest from consultants to carry out an environmental and social impact assessment for rural electrification projects in the country. The projects will follow the route of the 330kV North Core interconnector, which will connect Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria.