Renewvia Energy Corporation is a small U.S. solar energy company based in Atlanta, Georgia, which was ranked as top 500 Global Solar Developer for the first time in 2018. Since its founding in 2008, Renewvia has designed, installed, owned and operated over 80 megawatts (MW) of power across the United States, Pacific Islands, South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Projects range from equipping large industrial farms with up to 60 MW of renewable energy to constructing 2.5 MW distributed rooftop solar arrays for industrial facilities and 50 kilowatt (kW) systems for small commercial buildings, along with hybrid and standalone solar microgrids of varying size in remote, hard-to-reach communities.
Since 2017, Renewvia has opened offices in Nigeria, Uganda and Kenya, is exploring over 100 solar microgrid development sites in Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda and more than tripled its Atlanta workforce with plans to grow.
Over the last decade, we’ve developed a range of small and large commercial and agricultural projects in a dozen states. The solar power systems were capitalized with everything from Solar Renewable Energy Credits, federal cash grants, state cash grants, state tax credits, utility production based incentives, utility cash grant incentives, federal accelerated depreciation and power purchase agreements.
Renewvia’s customers have steadily realized average returns up to 22 percent on the investment of owning their power. This is in part because all of solar installations successfully reduce our customers’ electricity bills and, in some cases, zeroing out their cost of power altogether.
Developing Microgrids in Sub-Saharan Africa:
Regarding our solar microgrid projects, the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) announced a partnership with Renewvia in 2016 for two projects through Power Africa, the U.S. Government-led partnership to reduce energy poverty. For one of the projects, Renewvia will develop eight new microgrid plants totaling 1.5 MW of peak installed capacity. We have finished the feasibility study, and work is currently underway to construct and then manage all eight microgrid facilities. We also conducted a feasibility study in 2018 for the USTDA for 25 new microgrid sites in Nigeria totaling 5 MW of power.
As a result of these projects, we began to increase our efforts to develop solar microgrids across sub-Saharan Africa. By prioritizing community engagement upfront and throughout the entire process, Renewvia’s approach to microgrid development is creating a more sustainable impact in the communities where we work.
Mfangano Island: In 2017, Renewvia Energy Kenya Ltd., a subsidiary of Renewvia Energy Corporation, was engaged by Lake View Fisheries (LVF) to develop, own and operate a solar powered hybrid microgrid for its initial hatchery facility on Mfangano Island, located offshore from the lakeside regional hub of Mbita. Today, this 6.7 kW rooftop microgrid is powering LVF’s incubators and filtration pumps when grid power is not available – reducing the need to run expensive and dirty diesel-powered back up pumps and generators and saving LVF thousands of dollars annually.
Ndeda and Ringiti Islands: With the developing and commissioning of two plants in Lake Victoria, Kenya, we successfully piloted and proved a more comprehensive approach, which we’re calling Renewvia’s Rural Microgrid Development and Operation Model, a blueprint for scaling affordable and reliable power in areas that are unserved by conventional utilities or ineligible for grid extension (more below).
When we powered up two new 20 kW and 10kW solar microgrids in mid-2018, Renewvia is now providing the nearly 10,000 residents of Ringiti and Ndeda islands with access to their first safe source of electricity.
Collaborating with community leaders throughout the process, these facilities have already generated over 350 connections, serving approximately 2,000 families, schools, clinics, local entrepreneurs and key fishing businesses central to the islands’ economy. Renewvia’s proprietary mobile payment platform creates a simple and affordable pre-payment method to procure power while we collect revenue (and increasingly valuable data) from owning and operating the microgrids.
We are now focused on a rapidly growing pipeline of new projects that will scale up access to electricity in rural and remote regions sub-Saharan Africa, while providing a return on investment.
Renewvia’s Rural Microgrid Development and Operation Model
Our approach both expands access to clean, safe and reliable electricity through the construction of solar photovoltaic and battery-powered plants, which are designed to accommodate additional capacity from wind or other sources of electricity, in hard to reach communities AND provides a sustainable return on investment at scale by focusing on four core pillars:
Prioritizing community engagement upfront and throughout the process;
Working with national regulators and regional and local government officials to properly secure the rights to own and operate each facility for 20 years;
Harnessing innovations in clean tech to procure and construct the most efficient power systems tailored to community needs;
Building in a continued revenue stream and data from individual community inhabitants and local businesses.