'Funding shouldn't deter business from going solar'
Ecoligo, a solar financing company, has asked businesses in the country not to allow upfront investment to deter them from adding solar to their energy mix.
The company, which has financed turnkey solar projects in the country, said finding a good partner could help make the upfront cost of the resource a thing of the past.
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The Senior Marketing Manager of Ecoligo, Ms Emma Patmore, told the Daily Graphic that the company specialised in covering the investment cost of solar projects to make it possible for more users to join the solar space.
“We know that although solar energy will provide great savings for business throughout the lifetime of the project, the large upfront payment is not too good for businesses. They want to invest in their core businesses and not into their energy generation. That is why we cover the investment of the project to make it possible for the businesses,” she said.
Ms Patmore spoke to the paper on the sidelines of the Fifth Renewable Energy Fair and Symposium, which ended on October 11 in Accra.
The five-day event focused on the immense potential that the country has in the renewable energy space.
It also gave firms operating in the sector the opportunity to show their products to the public.
Tailored solutions
Ms Patmore said Ecoligo was interested in supporting both commercial and industrial users to add solar to their energy mix.
She said the company had noted that the initial investment that was required for the installation and management of the system for users made it difficult for most firms to patronise solar, so taking care of the cost would help businesses focus on their core operations while a separate entity handled their energy generation problems.
The Senior Marketing Manager at Ecoligo added that the company created a tailored offer for each business, depending on its business model.
Financing
Ms Patmore said the company focused on developing, managing and financing solar projects for commercial and industrial customers.
“What we want to offer our customers is basically the chance to get solar energy without having a high upfront cost. We do the financing and later also do the maintenance of the system throughout the contract period,” she said.
With a complete digital platform for financing and delivering solar projects, she said Ecoligo removed the barriers that often prevented such projects from being realised and supplied businesses with affordable electricity.
That, she said, enabled businesses to grow and boost the local economy.
Central University Project
In addition to other projects, Ecoligo recently partnered Yingli Namene West Africa to install and maintain a 401-kilowatt (KW) solar project for the Miotso Campus of the Central University (CU) at Dawhenya in Accra.
The plant was designed and built by Yingli Namene and enabled by Ecoligo.
Touching on the project, Ms Patmore said “we financed the project and we are also the asset managers. “We have a contract with the CU in which we manage the maintenance of the system over the contract lifetime. If there are problems with the system, we can directly get in touch with our installation partners and basically go to the site immediately and fix it to ensure that the system continues to run smoothly,” she said.
She added that the investment amount for CU project was raised through crowd investing platform: ecoligo.investments in Germany.
Partnership
She noted that the company’s partnership with Yingli Namene was focused on making sure that companies had a working solar system beyond just providing them with energy savings.
“We make sure that customers are getting solar energy as easy as possible and with our partnership with Yingli Namene, we are able to do that. We have our contract with them to install the system according to our rigorous standards which are developed back in Germany,” she noted.
She added that the company monitored the system and was able to alert their partners to go and fix the problem once it was detected.
