Zimbabwe

With pressure mounting on the world’s governments to turn their back on the fossil fuel, China and peers in South East Asia, Europe and South Asia could help deliver a coal-free future at the COP26 climate summit planned in Glasgow in November.

Johannesburg-based clean power business Blockpower is working on installing a back-up power supply across three agricultural estates in Zimbabwe.

A report commissioned by EU lender the EIB has dismissed the role solar mini-grids can play in achieving universal electrification by 2030 and signaled distribution to individual households should be the way forward, including sales to the residents of UN refugee camps in East Africa.

The Africa Solar Industry Association has recorded almost 2 GW of large scale project announcements since the start of last month with 18 countries planning new clean power infrastructure and including energy storage in the plants.

Solar is the main energy source among all independent power producer projects licensed by the authorities in Zimbabwe. The largest solar plant under construction in the country is a 25 MW facility in Matabeleland North province.

With South Africa holding 63,000 of the world’s estimated 69,000 metric tons of platinum reserves – according to the Statista.com website – and Russia and Zimbabwe a further 5,100 between them, the European Commission has cited the metal as an example of a potential supply chain bottleneck that could handicap its grand plans for renewables-powered hydrogen production.

The International Renewable Energy Agency has combined energy infrastructure commitments across a huge swathe of the continent with hundreds of regional sites which offer rich solar and onshore wind potential, to determine what could be possible.

With Cape Town-based solar crowdfunder The Sun Exchange having generated $1.4 million for a 510 kW solar-plus-storage facility for Zimbabwean food company Nhimbe Fresh, pv magazine has spoken to the heads of both businesses–Sun Exchange CEO and founder Abraham Cambridge and Nhimbe executive chairman Edwin Moyo–about the fundraising exercise. First up is The Sun Exchange founder…

Roof-mounted solar, and even storage systems, provide cheaper power than mains electricity or diesel generation, prompting companies such as Total to install modules at forecourts across the continent.

Abe Cambridge, chief executive and founder of solar cell-level, crowdfunding-based PV leasing business The Sun Exchange has spoken to pv magazine about the company’s project pipeline and its focus on bringing affordable clean power to schools.