Madagascar

The island nation’s first utility scale solar park is set to double in size and have energy storage added, with work due to start this month.

With Chinese manufacturers having warned they will pass on escalating component costs, and shipping expenses soaring since last summer, the rising price of solar is forcing some installers to redraft quotes, pv magazine has discovered.

The Kenyan financial services business has been developing rural mini grids across Africa and has announced plans to show its rivals how such networks can thrive, in a bid to accelerate access to electricity on the continent.

Each unit contains 200 pre-assembled and pre-wired photovoltaic panels and can be deployed in 30 minutes.

The Malagasy government has announced three PV projects, each with a 5 MW generation capacity, will be built this year. The nation’s cumulative installed solar capacity was only 33 MW at the end of last year.

The project connects four to six households, and lets dwellers pre-purchase daily access to electricity using a mobile app. A successful trial phase has just been finished and the executing association, Nanoé Développement has set new goals to reach in the near future.

The 20 MW facility will sell power to Madagascar’s state-owned utility, Jirama under a long-term PPA. Construction on the plant started in late 2016.

Autarsys reports the roll-out of two off-grid battery systems in Madagascar. Thanks to crowd investment, its order books are full. Streamlining the process of investment, the Germany-based start-up will cooperate with crowd investment platforms, Greenvesting and Ecoligo.

A solar facility made up of 720 solar PV modules and coupled with a 315 Kwh storage system is expected to power several communities of the Bongolava region.

The 25 MW (AC) solar PV project will be located near the capital of Antananarivo and will be supported by the World Bank’s Scaling Solar group program.