BY MTHANDAZO NYONI
DISTRIBUTED Power Africa (DPA), a subsidiary of Econet Wireless Global, is targeting to have 100 megawatts of installed capacity from solar as part of the initiative to move Zimbabwe towards a green economy.
DPA’s business primarily focuses on rooftop solar power systems for commercial and industrial customers.
Speaking to journalists in Bulawayo last week after the launch of the Econet Bulawayo office, DPA Zimbabwe chief executive officer Divyajeet Mahajan said currently the company had two megawatts under commissioning.
“Econet has already committed $250 million to this initiative for different customers. We started this journey with Econet being parent company, all of the Econet offices are going green, already five or six buildings have already gone green and some of the buildings are in the process of going green,” Mahajan said.
“We have also signed external clients, we are doing around 20 projects now and overall, in the next three to five years, we should be doing around 100 to 150 megawatts of installed capacity. 100MW is our target for the next three to five years,” he said.
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Mahajan said they have a lot of companies they were engaging to close the deals.
“At this point, we have more than one megawatt of installed capacity and two megawatts are under commissioning. So in the next two to three months, we should be sitting at around three megawatts of installed capacity and then we have about 80 megawatts which we are working on to close,” he said.
Several commercial and industrial clients that have signed in include organisations in the food, beverages and dairy sectors, schools, farms and small business enterprises, he said.
Zimbabwe liberalised its energy sector in a bid to promote participation of private capital, but with little foreign capital flowing into the country because of its status as a high-risk investment destination, most of the projects have suffered stillbirth.
According to the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority, independent power producers contribute 137,08 gigawatt hours power to the national grid.