Enhancing Ghana’s green energy drive

UMAWA-Arkolia West Africa Limited (UMAWA-Arkolia), a Ghanaian renewable energy company, has completed arrangements to rent 70,000 square metres of roof space of Davenport, a real estate developer, to produce electricity using solar panels.

The Davenport building roofs form part of about 3,400 average Ghanaian homes that will benefit from 10mw of power generated by solar panels from UMAWA-Arkolia.

Arrangements are also in place to supply German and French made solar components such as inverters, solar panels and high quality and robust batteries for engineers to install residential power plants for individual homes across the nation.

These were disclosed by the CEO of UMAWA-Arkolia, Mr Francis Kwaku Mensah, in an interview with the Daily Graphic.

Why Davenport roofs?

He said “we chose Davenport because of their business concept that befits sustainability and the solid state of their buildings that can withstand the 20-year lifespan of our plants.”

He disclosed that similar roof-rental agreements had been reached with SAPHOLDA Ventures, the Ghana Police Service and the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA).

Mr Mensah stated that it was in line with the government of Ghana’s initiative on rooftop solar systems as stated by President John Mahama during his recent “State of The Nation Address”, that UMAWA-Arkolia had engaged several reputable companies in Ghana to rent their roofs for this purpose. “Our solar components come with lengthy guarantees and efficient after-sales-services and the connotation here is on efficiency,” Mr Mensah added.

During his recent State of the Nation Address, President Mahama said it was estimated that 200,000 rooftop solar systems would save the country about 200MW of power daily.

In a telephone interview with the Financial Controller of Davenport, Mr Mahmood Raza, he said making their company’s roofs available for production of green energy totally reflected the company’s mission to support countries in which Davenport operated.

“Harnessing the sun’s radiation to produce energy mirrors Davenport’s policy to preserve nature and congenially use natural resources wherever possible. The power crisis that has unfortunately befallen Ghana is a situation for which we all cannot standby unconcerned. Giving UMAWA-Arkolia access to our roofs for such an endeavour is our active contribution towards uprooting dumsor at its source,” Mr Raza emphasised.

Agreement with ECG

According to Mr Mensah, UMAWA-Arkolia’s next step was to finalise an off-taker’s agreement with the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to feed the power directly into the distribution grid when generated.

“Producing power via smaller solar plants dotted across the country for local consumption would enormously reduce the dreaded transmission losses experienced by the grid operators in evacuating huge amounts of power on long stretches,” he said.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, Mr Collins Dadzie, Special Assistant to the Head of the Regulatory and Government Affairs Division of the ECG said the off-taker’s agreement with UMAWA-Arkolia was still under negotiation and was sure it would be signed by the close of year if UMAWA-Arkolia got all necessary requirements ready for both parties to sign.

Touching on how the agreement would benefit Ghana, he said “obviously this is power from solar so it is utilising the solar radiation in Ghana and it is also going to add to the national grid.”

Mr Dadzie stated that UMAWA-Arkolia’s rooftop solar concept would be the first of its kind in Ghana after the agreement had been signed as other solar projects in the country were all ground mounted. “People have small solar panels in their houses but solar panels that would connect to the grid is the first of its kind,” he reiterated.

Mr Mensah said his company’s plans also included the construction of industrial carports at parking lots of companies, churches and malls to place solar panels on them to produce energy. The CEO expects the first batch of power to be ready for evacuation in February 2016.

UMAWA-Arkolia is also in the process of developing Waste-to-Energy plants at two locations in the country. Mr Mensah said: “we intend to replicate in Ghana, exactly what our partners do in Europe by transforming waste into energy in addition to our solar programmes.”