​After the launch of the project in Mali in 2014, the start-up Africa GreenTec has now successfully commissioned its first solar container in the Tahoua region of Niger. The container relies on a mobile 41-kWp photovoltaic installation and a 60-kWh battery storage system to provide electricity to the village of Amaloul Nomade, which is not connected to the national grid.
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Thanks to solar power, residents of the village can now work and learn, even after dark. The construction, transport and installation of the 40-foot solar container was made possible by private investors and the International Climate Initiative (IKI).

90 percent of African refugee routes pass through Niger, the country with the lowest development index in the world. This has prompted the German federal government to focus on Niger as well as Mali in its efforts to mitigate the causes of flight to Europe.

The solar container is being installed as part of a programme to promote climate partnerships with the private sector, which is being conducted by the German Investment and Development Company (Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (DEG)) as part of the International Climate Initiative (IKI). The German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) is supporting the initiative on the basis of a decision by the German Bundestag.

“We can offer the local people a bit of comfort, access to education and knowledge, and new prospects – today, all of these things are especially dependent on a reliable supply of electricity,” says Torsten Schreiber, Founder and CEO of Africa GreenTec. “Rather than just discussing the causes of flight, our joint investment in Niger effectively combats them.”

Delivering the solar container presented difficulties for Africa GreenTec. “The last 75 kilometres of desert roads were a huge challenge for the lorries. In addition, we were unable to use any cranes on site and so had to rely on our own lifting system,” Schreiber explains. The team also had to contend with high temperatures during installation, which had to take place during the day, as power was not yet available. “In the end, we succeeded and were able to celebrate the long-awaited arrival of self-generated power with the residents of Amaloul Nomade,” says Schreiber.

The solar container and storage system allows the residents of Amaloul Nomade, where daytime temperatures are around 45°C, to move activities to the evening hours, when temperatures are cooler. Social life no longer ends when the sun sets at 6:00pm. Instead the village now comes alive under the glow of electric lights. Residents use the electricity for radios, televisions and fans. Children go to school in the evenings, and tradesmen, hairdressers and café owners improve their businesses with electric devices. Moreover, village residents have access to satellite-supported internet for the first time.

In contrast to diesel engines, renewable energy provides residents with a cheaper, cleaner and quieter source of power, and frees them from reliance on diesel deliveries, which are often delayed and expensive.

To ensure that the installation runs smoothly and sustainably, Africa GreenTec has hired a guard and an electrician, who will receive training from the German social enterprise. A supervisor from the regional capital of Tahoua will also care for the installation. The output and condition of the system can be checked via satellite from Germany.

WHEN SATELLITES TRAIN their cameras onto Africa at night, it is almost as if they are peering back to an age before electricity. The rich world is awash with great glowing orbs for the main population centres and orange tentacles for the roads that link them. But apart from speckles of light around the biggest cities, much of Africa is dark.
Of all the measures of the continent’s poverty, few are starker than that about two-thirds of its people have no access to reliable electricity. The Africa Progress Panel (APP), a group of experts led by Kofi Annan, a former UN secretary-general, puts the number of Africans without any power at 620m, most of them in villages and on farms. The panel found that in nine African countries fewer than one in five primary schools had lights. A study by the World Health Organisation found that about a quarter of clinics and hospitals in 11 African countries have no power of any kind, and many of the rest get it from generators that often break down or run out of fuel.
Such power shortages cost lives. In Nigeria each year an estimated 36,000 women die during pregnancy or childbirth, many because they deliver their babies in the dark in clinics such as the one in Makoko, a slum perched on stilts above a lagoon in Lagos, Nigeria’s biggest commercial city. It has just a few rough wooden beds in a small room with a doorway so low that people have to stoop to enter it. Straightforward deliveries are done by candle and torchlight, says one local resident, a fisherman. If anything goes wrong, the mother is carefully passed down to a small fishing canoe and taken to a bigger hospital across the lagoon. By then it is sometimes too late. Without power even the simplest health precautions can become difficult. “If you don’t have electricity you don’t have a fridge, and if you don’t have a fridge you can’t store vaccines,” says Jasper Westerink, who runs the African business of Philips, a Dutch multinational firm.
Businesses across the continent have to contend with frequent blackouts, known as dumsor in Ghana, from the Asante words for “off and on”. They rely on expensive backup generators, so the electricity they use is among the costliest in the world. The full impact of intermittent and high-cost energy on Africa’s economy and society is hard to measure, but it seems safe to say that this is the biggest single barrier to development.

Read more.......

With a Matric certificate in electrical engineering, I am completing a National Diploma 2015-end 2017. Although I have broad skills set in Electrical and electronic engineering, in IT and in project management.
I enjoy designing electrical systems, investigating faults; complex problem solving and implementing solutions on an individual basis and in teams. My enthusiasm, flexibility, sense of accountability and attention to detail, enables me to perform well under pressure and fully meet deliverable. This is achieved through logical thinking, establishing and maintaining order when implementing projects. In fulfilling tasks, I am conscious of time, quality and cost.
In order to hone my skills to professional grade, I yearns to partake an entry level job with the title of Junior Technician or junior project manager or Team leader in the Electrical industry or IT industry. Or a graduate program. I am passionate about Electrical design, Renewable energy, Automation, project management, software development, trouble shooting and open to learning a new trade.

VOUMO TIOGO JOEL BRICE                                                                                          

​Read CV.......

Solar power grew faster than any other source of fuel for the first time in 2016, the International Energy Agency said in a report suggesting the technology will dominate renewables in the years ahead.

The institution established after the first major oil crisis in 1973 said 165 gigawatts of renewables were completed last year, which was two-thirds of the net expansion in electricity supply. Solar powered by photovoltaics, or PVs, grew by 50 percent, with almost half of new plants built in China.

“What we are witnessing is the birth of a new era in solar PV,” Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said in a statement accompanying the report published on Wednesday in Paris. “We expect that solar PV capacity growth will be higher than any other renewable technology through 2022.”

This marks the sixth consecutive year that clean energy has set records for installations. Mass manufacturing and a switch by governments away from fixed payments for renewables forced down the cost of wind and solar technology.

The IEA expects about 1,000 gigawatts of renewables will be installed in the next five years, a milestone that coal only accomplished after 80 years. That quantity of electricity surpasses what’s consumed in China, India and Germany combined.

The surge of photovoltaics in China is largely due to government support for renewables, which are being demanded by a population concerned about air pollution and environmental degradation that has led to deadly smogs. The country is seeking to reduce its reliance on coal and has become the world’s largest market for renewables, particularly solar.

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Assessing a 500 kWp photovoltaic (PV) plant to provide a simplistic approach to determine the performance which PV plants can achieve after a certain period in operation. The 500 kWp PV plant discussed in this article operates in the Northern Cape and has been in operation for over a year. The plant was commissioned by Brand Engineering SA, which is responsible for the generation of 360 MW of power for Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) projects and other related renewable energy initiatives.

The plant is rated at 450 kW/502 kWp and therefore has an AC to DC ratio of 89,6%. It consists of 18 25 kW string inverters which convert DC power from 1620 310 W PV panels into AC power at 400 V, and stepped up to 11 kV and fed into the client’s MV network.

Fig. 1: Costs for commercial scale photovoltaic installations have dropped to below R15/kWp
SANS 50010 Guidelines for measurement and verification of energy savings provides guidance for a more complicated approach but, in principle, uses the following core equation:

Energy saving = (baseline period energy use) – (reporting period energy use) ± adjustments.

In this particular case, the energy saving should be equal to or exceed the upfront guaranteed yield and performance ratio value. The baseline period energy use of the client on the network is not discussed in this report but the demand exceeds the output of the PV plant at all times. No “+/-” adjustments have been taken into account, but an example of this could be network downtime by others.

Read more........>>>>>>>>>>

With the increasing demand for mounting structure products and Li-Ion batteries, we continually strive to provide high quality products and related support. As an additional value we are therefore conducting product training on mounting structures and Li-Ion batteries. The training will take place on 25 October 2017 at Valsa’s premises from 9.00 to 16.30 - and is free of charge.

The following topics will be covered in the training:

Mounting Structures:

• Various types of roofs and methods of application
• Sizing and correct calculation of the shading of PV Solar System panels
• Carport application and sizing of the system
• Best practise for the application of mounting structures in Africa
• Hands on training

Lunch break

Li-Ion Batteries:

• Difference between Lead Acid and Li-Ion
• Li-Ion vs. other storage technologies
• Dominance of LiFePO4 in ESS worldwide
• Product design and components
• Battery Management System design and functionality
• Overall system overview and scalability

Networking after training.

Please revert with your booking no later than 20 October 2017 at info@valsa.co.za as seats are limited. All participants in the training session will be notified via e-mail and receive further details.
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A new, innovative decentralised water purification system was launched this month and is set to change the South African water purification landscape – one installation at a time.

The Kusini Water System, which was recently installed in the community of Extension 10, eMalahleni west, is a containerised, solar-powered water purification solution that uses locally sourced components to provide safe drinking water to communities in rural areas.

The system can treat water from any source, removing over 99.9% of all bacteria and viruses. It can also produce 40 times more water than reverse osmosis, the current best practice, using about half the energy.

The idea behind the system came from one man’s personal pursuit to change the narrative of access to water in rural communities. Murendeni Mafumo, founder of Kusini Water, grew up in Limpopo, a province acutely affected by limited access to safe drinking water, and says the image of young women collecting water from rivers has stuck with him throughout his life. It’s an image and practice he hopes to change.

Kusini Water System Container
The Kusini Water System is a containerised, solar-powered water purification solution
“I got involved with this issue mainly for personal reasons. The image of young women carrying water on their heads because there was never water at home is something I have carried with me throughout my career working in the big cities. As much as I enjoyed my work, I wanted to do more – I wanted to use my qualifications and skills in areas like the one I grew up in, where people are still dealing with these issues. Even today, when I go back home, it’s still the same image of the young girl collecting and carrying water on her head,” he explains.

To address this issue and provide a sustainable solution, Mafumo had to focus on two key factors: the cost of the infrastructure and the cost of the electricity.

“To tackle these issues, we decided that decentralising the water treatment system would be important, so ensuring that each site is producing water for that particular location and making it modular, meaning that the parts and components change according to the requirements of the location and the quality of the water we are treating. Finally, we opted to add some sort of off-grid power supply; in this instance, we chose to go with solar power, which we supplement with locally available power as a backup.”

Driving down costs

Kusile power station, originally due to cost R80-billion, could end up costing South Africa 40 times as much.
An analysis of the costs of the coal-fired power station in Mpumalanga show the construction bill is a drop in the ocean compared with wider costs over the plant's 50-year lifespan.

Pretoria University economics doctoral student Nonophile Nkambule said the costs included the plant's effect on biodiversity, air pollution, greenhouse gas output, damage to roads, noise and water quality.

He put its total costs at between R1.449-trillion and R3.279-trillion, equivalent to between 91c and 205c per unit of electricity produced, with water the biggest-ticket item at around two-thirds of the total.

Even a conservative estimate of the lifecycle burdens of Kusile, near Witbank, "doubles to quadruples the price of electricity, making renewable energy sources such as wind and solar attractive alternatives", said Nkambule.

He said about 77% of South Africa's electricity is derived from coal.

On August 30 Eskom said it had brought Unit 1 of the Kusile power station into production, four years behind schedule.

Source.......

EE Publishers cordially invites you, your colleagues, staff and all interested persons in your organisation to attend and participate in the presentations, workshops, exhibition, site visits and social events at SA Energy Storage 2017 
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SA Energy Storage 2017 covers an important business opportunity and enabling energy technology in:

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