Improving Renewables Penetration Through Plug and Play Microgrids

For Africa to meet its 2030 SDG7 targets and ambition of attaining energy-for-all by 2040 and climate neutrality by 2063, the proportion of renewables in the current energy mix needs to be dramatically improved through robust and effective technologies, sustainable business models, a skilled technical workforce and an enabling regulatory environment.

RePower will contribute to these efforts by demonstrating and validating a modular and scalable plug and play (PnP) microgrid system based on photovoltaics (PV) and biomass combined heat and power (BCHP) augmented with a battery energy storage system (BESS) and an intelligent energy management system (EMS), and by providing tools, processes and a roadmap to replicate the installation of this modular plug-and-play microgrid system at any other location.

The modular and scalable RePower microgrid system will build upon the Solartainer, an existing and containerised PV-BESS solution that has already been successfully piloted by project partner, AGT, in 21 locations empowering 25,420 customers in remote off-grid locations and providing 934 SMEs with power in Mali, Niger and Chad.

The new Solartainer RePower combined with a unique BCHP solution will have the capacity and flexibility to provide distributed, affordable, reliable and stable electricity as well as heat and cooling to off-grid communities in Senegal, Niger and Madagascar.

Compared to the average PV-based microgrids currently on the market for Africa, the RePower setup including BCHP will improve the renewable energy generation capacity of the existing plants by over 50% while also reducing the unit cost of electricity by about 60 % – 70 % allowing consumers to extend electricity usage to the productive use of energy (PUE), such as farming, water pumping, food processing, construction and other small-scale industries.

The modularity of the system allows sizing to meet the demands any specific application or locality, thus matching energy supply with demand.