Berlin, 9th May 2019 – Solarworx solar home & business systems (SHSs) provide the rural population of West Africa with access to electricity and support local small businesses. The pilot of 250 systems launched early 2019 together with local distributors in Senegal and Cameroon reveals this.
“We’re glad to see that the Solego systems serve a wide range of customers, from clients living “under-the-grid” in peri-urban areas to the most remote places in northern Cameroon where people experience electricity for the first time” states Solarworx CEO Felix Boldt. Beside of entertainment systems for private households several types of businesses such as kiosks, barber shops and phone charging businesses have been equipped. It has turned out that despite the monthly PayGo payments, customers now have more disposable income through the additional generated earnings. In the agricultural sector Solego systems have been installed in rural poultry farms providing lighting and pumping water for around 1000 chickens. Furthermore smaller fields of around 1ha are now drip irrigated with the Solego system in combination with a submersible pump. In particular for farmers with an irregular income depending on the season the installment payments through mobile money has turned out to be crucial. Seeing the positive local impact of the systems, further applications such as egg incubators are now being assessed.
During the pilot the systems’ performance has been tracked with the recently launched Solarworx monitoring platform. Local distributors have been trained in working with the platform in order to improve customer service as well as After-Sales. Data-Analytics on real-time basis have been applied to better understand the system usage and conduct further design improvements.
After the pilot phase the commercial rollout of SHSs will follow in the next months. Beside of further developments of stand-alone systems Solarworx is focusing on launching another pilot for Micro-Grids mid this year. “Developing and launching SHSs has been the first step for Solarworx to enter the market, but using the potential of interconnected systems will take off-grid solutions to another level” announces Alexander Hoffmann, who has been onbording the Senegalese distributor on the ground.
