Search results

London headquartered off-grid solar company BBOXX announced on 23 October that it has agreed a $5m loan facility with Essential Capital Consortium, a $50m social enterprise fund managed by Deutsche Asset Management that closed in March 2015. The loan will be used to expand the company’s operations in Rwanda. The loan facility will be managed by Atlas Mara’s Banque Populaire du Rwanda (BPR), which has a relationship with BBOXX.

Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Energy is inviting companies to prequalify for the rural electrification component of the Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea (CLSG) Electricity Networks Interconnection Project. Works under the contract will include construction of 33/0.415kV distribution networks in 29 rural communities, as well as the supply, installation and commissioning of single and triple phase STS prepayment meters and distribution transformers, and supply, installation and commissioning of 4,800 street lights in the same communities.

SolarNow announced on 18 October that it has agreed a $6m syndicated loan facility arranged by Washington DC-based SunFunder for its special purpose vehicle Safi, which stands for structured asset finance instruments. Safi provides finance for SolarNow’s residential customers, allowing them to purchase pay-as-you-go or lease off-grid solar home systems. SunFunder was also facility agent and a lender, alongside Zurich-based asset manager responsAbility Investments AG and Utrecht-headquartered social investor Oikocredit, each of whom provided $2m.

The UK’s BBOXX has reached agreement with the government to supply 300,000 solar home systems in Togo over the next five years. The government’s Vision 2030 programme aims to provide universal access to electricity. The population stands at 7m people, of which 700,000 households are living without access to the grid, although 66% of the population has access to a mobile phone. BBOXX will seek to roll out the first 10,000 systems across rural areas over the next 12 months.

Telecoms company MTN is extending its partnership with energy and financial services firm Fenix International to launch pay-to-own solar home systems in Zambia. The Swedish embassy in Lusaka is committing SEK24.75m ($3m) to the project between now and 2020, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is contributing $750,000. Fenix expects to reach 850,000 rural Zambians by 2020 with its ReadyPay Power solar home system, which gives off-grid customers access to affordable solar power.

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).

Berlin-based pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar provider Mobisol announced on 27 June that it has acquired Lumeter, one of the largest providers of PAYG software for the off-grid solar industry. Mobisol said the combined company creates an unrivalled player with strong pricing power and expertise in the metering sector for stand-alone solar systems and mini-grids. Following this acquisition, the Mobisol platform now supports more than 500,000 people globally with access to clean, reliable and affordable power, Mobisol said.

The Ministry of Energy plans to recruit a consultant to help draw up a green mini-grid policy. The project has financial and technical support from the African Development Bank through the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa. The project aims to help improve access to clean, sustainable and affordable energy for all Nigerien households. It will define a policy and regulatory framework to promote and stimulate private investment in order to double the capacity of existing systems or to install new renewable mini-grids.

The Ministry of Petroleum and Energy will release tender documents in April for consultants to assist with a green mini-grid programme. The work is being funded by a grant from the Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa (Sefa) and comprises two components. The first is to develop an enabling environment and build capacity for mini-grids. This will support new institutional arrangements, market stimulation initiatives for private operators to supply affordable power, the categorisation of mini-grid projects, permiting and concession arrangements, technical standards, tariff models, and the relationship with the grid.

Pioneering off-grid solar services company Azuri Technologies has announced that it has reached 100,000 sales for its PayGo solar home systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Chief executive Simon Bransfield-Garth told African Energy on the sidelines of the Powering Africa Summit in Washington on 9-10 March that the Cambridge-based company expected another 100,000 sales over the coming year. He said that Azuri and similar sized off-grid solar companies on the continent have been doubling their sales consistently every year, with new financing the key to maintaining growth.

The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and Dutch development bank FMO have invested in pay-as-you-go solar provider Mobisol GmbH to help supply renewable energy to off-grid communities in East Africa. IFC’s equity investment of €5.42m ($5.63m), and €9.2m from the AEF and Massif Dutch government funds managed by FMO, brings them into partnership with Investec Asset Management’s African Private Equity Fund and Germany’s DEG, which have already invested in Mobisol.

Two very different communities are coming closer together to see if they can enact radical change in regions of sub-Saharan Africa that have little realistic chance of being connected to secure electricity grids. Already on the ground are the off-grid pioneers – often supported by individual donors and NGOs, philanthropic and other impact investors, such as the Shell Foundation – who have usually focused on small-scale projects.

The World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) launched a new programme in September to encourage the use of off-grid and embedded solar photovoltaic technology at commercial and industrial complexes. The scheme, called the Off-Grid and Embedded Solar Market Development and Finance Programme in Nigeria, will receive $30-$50m from the IFC’s own account for investments alongside local financial institutions, IFC spokesperson Ejura Audu told African Energy. DfID is providing $8m of concessional funding to create incentives to stimulate the market and $3m for operational and technical assistance

State utility Compagnie Energie Electrique du Togo (CEET) has invited prequalification for a project to electrify 69 rural communities. The project is divided into two lots, with Lot 1 covering the Kara and Savanes regions, and Lot 2 the Maritime, Plateaux and Centrale regions. The work is funded by the Islamic Development Bank and Opec Fund for International Development. Bids for prequalification tender AOI/PM No 022/DEP/PRMP/DG/CEET/2016 are due by 18 October. Invitations to bid are expected to be issued in January.