off-grid

Earlier this year, the African Development Bank announced plans to facilitate 10GW of solar across the barren, semi-arid Sahel region of Sub-Saharan Africa. PV Tech investigated how increasing human pressure on the land and the widespread cutting down of trees for wood and charcoal for fuel can be alleviated by solar PV technology.

Myanmar-based off-grid PV company SolarHome has raised US$10 million in debt funding from a group of international investors, including Crowdcredit from Japan and Trine from Sweden, in order to expand across Myanmar.

The European Union has provided a grant of roughly €60 million to the Philippines government for the implementation of a programme that would expand access to clean electricity services and promote new energy efficiency strategies in remote areas.

The distributed renewable energy (DRE) sector, necessary in a world with millions of people without power, is being held back by a chronic shortage of skilled workers. Indeed, Sub-Saharan Africa (excluding South Africa) has just 16,000 people working in renewable energy in a region with 600 million un-electrified people, according to the founders of a new campaign aiming to fill this skills gap.

The country's total solar deployment is now just short of 24GW.

Kazang Solar, the distribution partner of UK-headquartered off-grid solar specialist Azuri Technologies in Zambia, has been awarded US$1.6 million from the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund (AECF) to provide home lighting products to more than 7,000 off-grid customers in rural Zambia.

Zola Energy, one of two US-headquartered providers of off-grid solar-plus-storage solutions to the African continent profiled in Energy-Storage.news’ recent Global Storage Opportunity 2018 report, has obtained US$20 million debt financing.

The majority of households with PV systems in East Africa have reported an increase in economic activity in the first three months of using the solar power, according to a new report from GOGLA, the global association for the off-grid solar energy industry.

India hit 23,866MW of solar power deployment as of 30 June this year, according to Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) figures.

UK-based off-grid renewables specialist BBOXX has delivered smart solar home systems to over 12,000 people in Togo over a six-month period.