African property developer Rendeavour’s 1 MW rooftop project in Nairobi – built on top of Dormans Coffee’s headquarters in the Tatu Industrial Park – is generating enough electricity to cater to the needs of around 8,500 people per year. Rendeavour completed the installation in less than a week, it said in an online statement. The company did not reveal the PV module supplier for the project, which required 15 km of cable.
“The power produced from the solar panels will be distributed for use by homes and businesses within the city,” said Nick Langford, Kenya country head for Rendeavour.
The Lagos-based developer plans to install solar panels on every rooftop in the Tatu Industrial Park, which it says is the biggest in East Africa. The site – reserved for light, non-polluting companies – includes facilities owned by businesses such as London-based consumer goods giant Unilever. The industrial park is part of a larger development that includes Tatu City, a 5,000-acre, mixed-use development with more than 5,000 homes under construction in addition to offices and retail space.
Unfulfilled potential
Kenya offers enormous solar potential but its cumulative PV installation capacity remains negligible, at just 93 MW at the end of 2018, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. However, the Kenyan government and the World Bank recently unveiled a strategic roadmap that highlighted the importance of off-grid solar in providing universal energy access. The partner organizations estimated the plan could provide up to $14 billion in investment opportunities over five years.
A handful of new project announcements in recent months have also raised hopes for utility scale PV. In early December, French developer Voltalia obtained an $18.1 million loan from the African Development Bank to build 50 MW of solar in Nandi County, about 310 km northwest of Nairobi. And just two weeks later Voltalia revealed it would handle EPC services for another 40 MW solar project independent power producer Alten Africa is developing near the city of Eldoret.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.