Off-Grid

The international development entity has already invested $1 billion in local, off-grid electricity networks over the last decade – and attracted a further $1.1 billion in matched funding – and has predicted mini-grids could supply electricity to 490 million people by 2030.

The move will encourage private sector renewables companies to be part of the national energy industry, a representative of the regulator told a recent webinar which considered how to accelerate clean energy roll-out in Africa.

Smart Power India, a unit of the Rockefeller Foundation, has supported the installation of 9.2 MW of renewables-based minigrids at more than 300 sites across India. Jaideep Mukherjee, CEO of SPI, recently spoke to pv magazine about the importance of minigrids and barriers to deployment.

France’s Revolt Energy Green has developed a flexible solar+storage solution for one-off events, construction sites, and different kinds of off-grid applications. It has also developed a mobile hydrogen solution.

A webinar held to discuss the role of donor funding in the African energy sector was told the U.S. president has ambitious plans to ramp up donations to developing economies – provided he can get Congress on side.

The Sustainable Development Goal set forth in SDG 7.1 calls for universal access to affordable, reliable, and modern energy services by 2030. It is estimated that currently 789 million people do not have access to electricity in their homes or communities. Rural inhabitants encompass 80% of the total number of people lacking household electricity access. On a global scale, rural inhabitants have been gaining access to electricity at a rapid rate over the past couple decades (IRENA 2020, 23). However, certain regions have seen little improvement in this area. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is the starkest example.

In a recent GOGLA discussion paper, 25 GOGLA members discussed the way forward on how end-user subsidies can be modeled to accelerate universal energy access in underserved markets.

In a move that’s sure to pan out well for the Granny Smith gold mine in Western Australia, Aggreko has installed one of the country’s largest renewable energy microgrids, with 7.7 MWp of solar to be integrated with the site’s existing power station. pv magazine recently sat down with Karim Wazni, Aggreko’s managing director of microgrids and storage solutions, to discuss how microgrids and energy storage can help transition Australia’s resource sector.

The Solar Energy Corporation of India has issued a call for expressions of interest to supply clean energy to isolated off-grid communities and warned components will probably have to be transported manually.

A Spanish-Dutch research group has created nomograms for PV system sizing that not only offer a standard calculation tool but also provide additional information about what-if scenarios with higher-level knowledge about price of modifications and limitations of project sites.