News and feature articles on microgrids in Africa including RFP's, policies and players impacting the region.
CrossBoundary Energy Access is investing an initial $16 million of capital to finance about 190 solar minigrids, each with a capacity of 6 kW-1 MW, across Sub-Saharan Africa. All told, the minigrids will bring electricity to nearly 34,000 off-grid, rural households and businesses -- about 70,000 people who now lack energy access, according … [Read more...]
A fledgling market for commercial and industrial (C&I) solar in Sub-Saharan Africa is poised for faster growth due to high-cost and poor-quality grid power, declining solar energy costs and the rise of energy storage, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance (NEF). The finding is significant to microgrids in the region … [Read more...]
A push is on to bring electricity to the nearly one billion people who lack it worldwide. But if you build it will they come? Apparently not, as some minigrid developers are finding in Sub-Saharan Africa. Electricity does little good for those who have nothing to plug in. And unfortunately that’s too often the case in remote areas with new … [Read more...]
Sachi Graber of the Rocky Mountain Institute describes a $200 million opportunity in Nigeria to develop undergrid minigrids, projects that shore up electricity for those served by unreliable grids. Traditionally in sub-Saharan Africa, electrification efforts have emphasized the hundreds of millions of people who live off-grid, with no … [Read more...]
Until December 2017, Kilowatt Labs was still a startup company, developing supercapacitor-based energy storage and an energy server that’s designed to manage distributed energy. But after the company delivered its first product in January, Kilowatt Labs attracted more business than expected. Most recently, it garnered a $2.5 million … [Read more...]
Researchers at the University of Rwanda and Colorado State University's (CSU) Energy Institute have joined forces to create microgrids that will provide energy access to rural, off-grid communities in Rwanda and across Sub-Saharan Africa. Rwanda's government estimates that only 20 percent of the population has access to reliable, safe … [Read more...]
Utilities see microgrids and related technologies as future revenue opportunities to help counter dampened profits from their traditional services, according to a new study from Accenture. The finding came from a survey of 150 utility executives across more than 25 countries, part of Accenture’s Digitally Enabled Grid research program, now … [Read more...]
UC San Diego connects electric vehicles to microgrid The University of California San Diego continues to advance its already advanced microgrid universe of technologies, this time with electric vehicle-to-grid capabilities for its free nighttime shuttle service, Triton Rides. The program is part of "INVENT," a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) program that … [Read more...]
Schneider Electric and software company Arensis will team up to develop smart microgrids using blockchain to help those in remote areas of the world make electricity transactions. A major player in microgrids, Schneider Electric has already delivered several distributed energy projects with California-based Arensis. The companies will now … [Read more...]
Renewvia has completed two Kenya microgrids on islands in Lake Victoria and expects to bring a third online soon as part of its larger strategy to light up rural Africa. The Atlanta, Georgia company is positioning to develop 43 solar-storage systems in Kenya and neighboring Uganda and Nigeria, CEO Trey Jarrard told Microgrid … [Read more...]
Ameresco’s vice president of microgrid services, Will Agate, describes the process of getting started on your microgrid project — the very first step of which is to carefully consider and define the needs of your organization and its community.
So how can utilities continue to fulfill their service reliability obligations of today, while also integrating the distributed energy and up-and-coming technologies of tomorrow? Download the new white paper from Siemens and learn more about how today’s utilities are beginning to prepare by entering discussions around grid modernization, DER compensation, and business model transformation, by sharply enhancing core utility priorities, such as reliability, resiliency, and efficiency.
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