Renewable energy technologies and integrated community energy systems in Africa
Approximately half of Africa’s population – about 600 million people – lack reliable access to electricity. At the same time, food and water security are threatened. While this poses a great challenge, addressing it offers tremendous opportunity for implementation of renewable energy technologies (RETs). Sustainable uptake of RETs will require co-creation with stakeholders all along the value chain and easy replicability and scalability. The EU-funded ENERGICA(opens in new window) project implemented collaborative methodologies to address local energy needs while considering resource availability. This is supporting positive technical, environmental, social and economic impacts and long-term sustainability.
Energy transition boards and integrated community energy systems
ENERGICA created energy transition boards comprising local stakeholders throughout the value chain to design and manage the RETs solutions. “The local energy transition boards were responsible for ensuring that the local technical, environmental, socio-economic and institutional conditions together with needs and capacities were considered when defining a technology’s implementation,” explains Boris Heinz of the Technical University of Berlin(opens in new window), project coordinator. The energy transition boards co-designed and managed the integrated community energy systems (ICESs). ICESs are innovative management and control systems designed to integrate distributed energy resources with the engagement of local communities.
Tailored rural, peri-urban and urban demonstrators
Rural Madagascar has one of the lowest electrification rates in southern Africa. There, ENERGICA developed innovative DC nano-grids with tailored photovoltaic (PV) systems to support the water-energy-food (WEF) nexus in off-grid communities. “In addition to supplying electricity to households for low-voltage consumer appliances, the PV-integrated nano-grids powered productive use systems for: water pumping, treatment and storage; rice husking; and food and water refrigeration,” Heinz says. While effective for household energy, demonstration showed that smaller-scale solutions are needed for productive use systems, such as a micro-local energy community for shared freezers rather than more expensive large-scale containerised solutions. ENERGICA deployed low-tech, locally manufactured technologies for innovative integrated biogas digestion and water purification in peri-urban Sierra Leone. In a circular economy model considering local value chains, “the area’s existing anaerobic digestion system now transforms organic waste into energy and fertiliser and is coupled to a water purification system,” notes Heinz. The project plans to support the hospital in Sierra Leone by valorising the biodigester’s heat for hospital water heating and disinfection and is investigating the potential of hydrogen energy systems to produce medical-grade oxygen. Finally, ENERGICA developed smart management systems for electric motorcycle fleets in on-grid areas in urban Nairobi. Nairobi gets about 85 % of its energy from RETs but has an outdated, inefficient transport system. The innovative software and solar-powered, grid-connected swapping stations increased decarbonisation while reducing power outages and electricity costs. The demo’s 10 Roam Air(opens in new window) (electric motorcycle) hubs servicing 1 300 Roam Airs created 100 new jobs in the last year. Ongoing increasingly local production of Roam Air components is strengthening Kenya’s manufacturing ecosystem and reducing reliance on imports.
Business models and capacity building designed to increase local uptake
The demonstrators enable local entrepreneurs and workforce personnel to test RETs. Capacity building and training programmes including courses and materials will ensure workforce and community sustainability, jobs creation and RETs uptake. Taken together, ENERGICA’s solutions support easy adoption, maintenance and local manufacturing as well as continued development, optimisation and tailoring. ENERGICA has strengthened AU-European cooperation in energy and climate and shown that RETs co-tailored and implemented through efficient and sustainable community-based approaches can be effective in any societal context.
Keywords
ENERGICA, energy, electric motorcycle, nano-grids, productive use, PV, renewable energy technologies, integrated community energy systems, water purification, biogas, water-energy-food
