UK-based solar solutions provider Solar- century’s ambition to expand into African markets has gained momentum with the group establishing an 85:15 joint ven- ture (JV) with a South Africa-based partner.

Solarcentury and project developer Momentous Energy officially launched Solarcentury Africa last week in a bid to roll out new solar power solutions for an electricity-constrained continent, CEO Frans van den Heuvel told Engineering News in an interview.

The parent group had established regional offices in Nairobi, Kenya, which serviced the East African region, while the South African office would serve as a platform to the rest of the continent.

As electricity prices rose and the resource became increasingly scarce, Solarcentury Africa would work across the commercial roof, solar park and isolated-grid markets to meet the increasing energy demand of businesses across Africa.

The company noted in a statement that the yearly 24-hour global solar radiation average was about 220 W/m² for South Africa, compared with about 150 W/m² for parts of the US and 100 W/m² for Europe and the UK.

“This makes South Africa’s local resource one of the highest in the world,” said Van den Heuvel.

This enabled the company to step in and develop solutions to replace or complement current fossil-fuel-based power generation with solar energy and enable significant savings across the board.

Cheaper and Easier

He compared the roll-out of solar energy to that of the roll-out of mobile telecom-munications technology. Instead of forking out tens of billions of dollars to lay the required infrastructure for coal-powered electricity grids across Africa, it would be cheaper and easier to install the technology of the future, which was solar, he argued.

Momentous Energy was currently building the 7 MW, 19 ha RustMo1 solar farm, near Rustenburg, under the first window of the South African government’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme. The solar park was expected to deliver power to the national grid by November.

Solarcentury Africa, which completed its first 88 kWp solar photovoltaic system instal-lation as a JV in August – a roof installation for property group Zenprop – was set to embark on the installation of 500 kW – as part of a 10 MW programme – for undisclosed properties owned by Growthpoint, after signing an agreement last week.