Ethiopia expansion, water purification and more!
No images? Click here
Did you know?
In 2022, Renewvia completed a huge expansion to the minigrid serving a refugee village called Kalobeyei Settlement in northern Kenya. This minigrid now serves over 15,000 people with nearly 3,000 connections to homes and businesses that did not otherwise have access to electricity.
Check out this time lapse video of the project here:
Improved Quality of Life
A recent 3rd Party Impact study in Kenya found that 90% of people claim to have an improved quality of life due to access to Renewvia's minigrid power service!
Renewvia Launches Joint Venture with Refugee-owned Renewable Energy Developer in Kenya Displacement Camp
Meet OkRene Energy:
• Okapi +Renewvia = OkRene Energy
• Okapi Green Energy Ltd was established in 2018 by a Congolese refugee who arrived in Kakuma in 2010.
• Renewvia contributes development capital and resources.
• Okapi contributes exclusive 20-year license.
• Minigrid will serve 15,000+ people living in Kakuma III refugee camp.
• Project will take 1 year to complete.
Vasco Hamisi, CEO Okapi Green
Trey Jarrard, CEO of Renewvia Energy: “Working with a skilled and capable local partner in displaced communities exponentially increases chances of success for scalable power projects. Renewvia is enthusiastic about expanding the relationship with Okapi Energy and replicating the structure in other displaced settlements and camps."
Want to know more about our PUE programs?
Read below about some of our exciting Productive Use of Electricity initiatives in our minigrid communities!
A pilot program with SNV and EnDev
has enabled 100 Renewvia customers in Kalobeyei Settlement displacement camp to receive an Electric Pressure Cooker as a way to increase productivity and improve quality of life. Recipients were given instructional classes on how to use the EPC for various foods.
Pictured below is Nijimbere from Congo who uses the EPC for home use.
Left: Daniel from South Sudan is a teacher at Morning Star Primary school and uses the large EPC to prepare student meals.
Right: Ismael from Sudan runs a local restaurant and uses the EPC to prepare food for customers.
A partnership with Grino Water Solutions
provides people in island communities of Ndeda and Ringiti with access to highly affordable filtered and purified water made using clean energy from Renewvia's solar minigrids. The systems can provide 6,000 liters a day! Since June 2022, over 150 liters have been sold to people who otherwise had to use lake water for cooking, cleaning and drinking.
Pictured below are Renewvia representatives in front of one of the Grino purification systems; the water treatment facility on Ringiti island; and local community members obtaining clean water.
Access to refrigeration
and deep freezing through a partnership with PACTWORLD providing refrigeration units from Koolboks. Now 15 Renewvia solar minigrid customers in 2 communities in Nigeria are the beneficiaries of these units to use for their businesses. Access to refrigeration allows for food storage, increases product offerings and ability to improve quality of life and generate more revenue.
Here are some images of the delivery and the orientation for instructional use.
International partnership with United Bank for Africa to develop solar microgrids beginning in Nigeria.
UBA is a multinational Pan-African financial services group headquartered in Lagos and known as Africa’s Global Bank. It operates over 1,000 business offices and customer touch points and has subsidiaries in 20 African countries and offices in London, Paris and New York and more than $20B of assets.
Renewvia will design, finance, own and operate solar microgrid systems to deliver clean, resilient, and affordable power supply to UBA’s branches substantially reducing the bank’s carbon footprint and advancing environmental goals while generating significant financial savings.
Expanding to Ethiopia
Renewvia has been named as the developer for the DREAM initiative in Ethiopia for Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP), an alliance of philanthropy, local entrepreneurs, governments, and technology, policy, with Rockefeller Foundation, Bezos Earth Fund, and IKEA Foundation as anchor partners. GEAPP and African Development Bank substantially de-risked the project by providing a recoverable grant and concessionary debt.
The Distributed Renewable Energy – Agriculture Modalities (DREAM) initiative will build the first solar mini-grid powered large scale irrigation systems in Africa, providing famers with reliable, affordable, and sustainable irrigation. Today, the initiative begins with the launch of nine renewable energy mini-grids and irrigation systems across Ethiopia.
Farmers are eager to support however possible to enable this key lacking infrastructure- despite being very close to
larger cities, these communities lack good roads, electricity, non-diesel powered irrigation, lighting, and clean water.
Highlighting 2 communities below.
Moko site , Oromia region
Evaluating where the installation of water pumps will be placed, possible minigrid locations
and community meeting discussing plans on how we will engage with the community, hire locally for construction and target times lines
Chefe Kora site selection, community meeting, and looking at the current irrigation which are existing dug wells in each field.
Impact measurement reports are on the way!
We are currently wrapping up our impact measurement analysis and are excited to share results very soon. Stay tuned!
Sept 2022
