Africa

France’s largest state-owned utility company has invested unrevealed finances into KarmSolar. The latter has installed a 165-megawatt solar pipeline throughout Egypt. The Egyptian startup supplies power to large-scale industrial, agricultural and commercial customers.

Deals have now been rubberstamped for Zambia to use small-scale solar to strengthen its climate-vulnerable power supply, in a scheme bankrolled by development financiers.

An Egyptian scientist has discovered a new way to achieve optimal electricity generation by hybrid generators with the help of power point tracking. The newly created permanent magnetic synchronous generator for wind-solar is based on multi-input rectifier converters. It is supposed to get rid of harmonic currents with no need for additional input filtering.

The Italian oil and gas provider has signed a concession agreement with the government of the African oil country to build a 50 MW solar plant. The project is expected to be in the province of Namibe and will be part of the nation’s plan to deploy 600 MW of solar by 2022.

Univergy International headquartered in Spain and Japan is planning to invest over $200 million in two photovoltaic projects in Zambia.

Two PV plants are set to be built under the Project for Promotion of Auctions for Renewable Energies program, being implemented with the support of Mozambican utility Electricidade de Mocambique, which is likely to be the future off-taker of the solar energy generated.

The local authority is seeking proposals to build mini-grids with generation capacities of more than 5 kW to power hospitals, markets, water pumping and street lighting. The council has expressed a strong preference for the build, operate and transfer project development model.

Industry body Gogla and the World Bank’s Lighting Global program said the last six months set a record for off-grid solar deployment. Solar home systems and other small off-grid appliances are being used in ever larger numbers.

The Algerian Electricity and Gas Regulation Commission has concluded a tender launched in June. The one solar project selected will sell power at DZD8.28/kWh. The authority reportedly only published ceiling prices for energy bids on the day the exercise was completed.

The regulator received 26 proposals overall for a project intended to make the kingdom less dependent on power imports from troubled South African utility Eskom.

Canadian business Caledonia Mining Corporation plc wants to build a power plant at its Blanket mine near Gwanda, in southern Zimbabwe.

The South African utility has issued a 20-strong tender for 50 kW solar inverters and mounting structures, to be used in four power plants. Although it is unclear whether the tender marks the energy company’s first step into solar energy, the procurement follows the recent publication of South Africa’s Integrated Resource Plan. Eskom is reportedly developing a renewables-linked large scale storage project which may explain the need for inverters.

The nation’s Central Procurement Board, on behalf of utility NamPower, has announced a tender to select an engineering, procurement and construction services contractor.

Renewable energy is rapidly being adopted by mining companies as the combination of off-grid power and cheaply available renewables offers a strong business case.

Nordgold intends to build a 13MW PV plant with battery storage that will provide power to its Burkina Faso gold mines, thanks to an agreement signed with Total Eren and equity investor Africa Energy Management Platform (AEMP) on Tuesday.