The Sunday News
Judith Phiri, Business Reporter
Distributed Power Africa (DPA), a division of the Econet group of companies, has made great strides in rolling out Huawei Technologies’ Smart Energy Fusion solution to be used in hybrid solar solutions for the African market, following their partnership agreement signed last year.
DPA which is transitioning to Distributed Power Technologies is a member of the Cassava Technologies Group.
Responding to e-mailed questions from Sunday News Business, DPA Zimbabwe chief executive officer (CEO) Mr Divyajeet Mahajan said the project was being rolled out in Zimbabwe and three other African countries.
He said the rollout of the Smart Energy Fusion product will ensure an increase in solar energy of up to 30 percent, reduced costs for customers as well as a stable power supply.
“The rollout has commenced, and includes Zimbabwe, South Africa, Zambia and Kenya. We are rolling out this project as part of our new Energy as a Service (EaaS) offering for homes or small businesses. The benefits are reliable clean solar power on zero capital investment.
The systems are robust and backed by world class leading brand warranties. The partnership will increase and enhance DPA’s product offering by providing improved storage and the company hopes this will increase the uptake of their reliable commercial and home solar energy solutions,” said Mr Mahajan.
He said another benefit of Huawei’s Smart Energy Fusion was that it was modular, customers could scale from between five kilowatts to 30 kilowatts depending on their evolving needs. In terms of providing renewable solar energy and storage solutions for its data centres, Mr Mahajan said most Econet Data Centres were already connected on solar power except for one in Harare which is expected to be completed this year.
“There are plans to add Li-Ion Battery solutions to all of the existing deployed solar solutions at data centres. In terms of more sustainable, low-impact data centres in Zimbabwe being deployed, this is definitely the future and as the traffic increases, businesses will plan for expansion and energy will be one of the main pillars for any data centre. We are hopeful that we will see more activities in sustainable data centre solutions,” he said.
He said as DPA they wanted to offer reliable energy by deploying only quality products without taking any shortcuts, revealing that they believed not only in deploying high quality products which will last for the next 15 to 20 years but also in timely maintenance.
Mr Mahajan said where other companies were offering only engineering or installation, DPA offered a full-service including procurement, maintenance, and financing.
“We reduce the barrier of significant capital outlay for renewable energy through our lease model financing solutions and guarantee top quality (Tier 1) equipment with warranties of up to 25 years. As DPA we have a state-of-the-art Network Operating Centre (NOC) dedicated to real-time monitoring and technical response maintenance of our projects. We continue to partner global technical partners like world leading French Electricity Company (EDF) and world leading clean energy company Tesla,” he added.
The CEO said for 2022 they were going to participate in energy discussions as thought leaders at trade events, as well as carry out stakeholder engagement on policy and regulation and customer education on renewable energy was also key in increasing demand for renewable energy.
“In the last year our track record has grown, through businesses adopting the solar solutions. We have installed solar systems for several reputable companies including companies like Anglo American Unki Mine, Tongaat Hulett, Tanganda Tea Company, Schweppes Beitbridge and First Mutual,” said Mr Mahajan.
