Ecoligo crowdinvestment campaign for flower farm PV system in Kenya launched

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Berlin-based solar company, ecoligo GmbH has launched another investment campaign on the platform ecoligo.investments for the financing of a 75 kW rooftop solar PV system for Kenyan flower farm, Rift Valley Roses. The project costs €94,000 and investors will retain a 5.50% interest rate over a loan period of eight years.

Local solar company, Harmonic Systems Ltd will install the system, according to a statement released. The generated solar energy is expected to cover 50% of Rift Valley Roses's electricity demand, including the operation of water pumps, and refrigeration and administrative facilities. Reportedly, it has 424 employees, and stretches over an area of 22 hectares.

Complicated financing

In the light of the high electricity demand, and ever-increasing electricity costs of flower farms, many operations in Kenya are opting for solar PV systems, to reduce operational expenses. However, financing options through local banks are complicated to obtain, as interest rates are prohibitively high.

At this year's The Smarter E, held in Germany, pv magazine met with Markus Schwaninger, founder and CFO of ecoligo to discuss his business model. The founders recognized that the financing of mid-sized PV projects often falls through cracks of development aid, which only finances systems after a certain size and cost have been reached.

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“We are offering the company a solution whereby they are receiving solar energy from us without making their own large investments. That means we are bringing the financing into these countries, because there are no finance possibilites.

“That is what co-founder Martin Baart and I experienced in the years before ecoligo while we were working in the sector and have been active in these markets. For these project sizes there are not financing mechanisms, as they are exclusively focussed on multi-million projects that feed two digits megawatt capacities centrally into the grid.”

Rift Valley Roses is said to be the third project of its kind for ecoligo.investments.

Link to ecoligo.investments page

pv magazine has partnered with ecoligo GmbH, and will receive a small percentage of each investment when a reader follows the above link.

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