Xpressions Flora Project: A State-of-the-Art Solar PV Ground Mounted Solution by Spenomatic Solar – EQ Mag Pro
Spenomatic Solar, the leading solar photovoltaic solutions provider in East Africa, implemented a state-of-the-art 427 KW solar PV ground mounted solution for a rose farm in Nakuru. This was a tremendous achievement for the group, which was finally making a breakthrough in the horticulture industry – a space that is very difficult to enter as it is a 24/7 process cycle with very high competition and tight delivery timelines.
Spenomatic’s breakthrough was with one of the largest rose farm groups in Kenya, Xpressions Flora, which exports 300,000 stems to Holland on a daily basis. This meant no room for error in terms of the flowers’ quality, as this could lead to huge losses.
A great challenge for Spenomatic Solar to overcome was that there was no roof space to install panels, as acres of land were used for greenhouses. This meant expanding into ground mounted solutions, a first for the company, which was successfully done helping the customer save 25% in power costs.
At the time, Spenomatic Solar was expanding beyond Nairobi into more remote areas of Kenya where the power supply can be difficult. This was both a learning and growing opportunity for the company, which decided to hire local workforce for assistance.
Spenomatic was still within its first year of entering the solar business but managed to onboard a unique client with a unique solution. As of today, the company has successfully secured several such clients within the same industry.
The agriculture and horticulture industries are currently the two largest sectors contributing to the Kenyan economy, of which rose farms are one of the top 5 contributors. Such rose farms usually export their flowers to Holland, where they then go to auction and are distributed across the globe. The rose farm industry by nature is therefore a very fast-paced, time sensitive industry to be in, with several competitors all striving for the highest bid at auction. For this reason, it was important to keep production costs as low as possible without compromising the quality of the flowers.
On top of all this, this particular customer was located in a remote area (Njoro Town) with poor grid connectivity and huge outputs. They were depending heavily on gensets to match their deliveries. Spenomatic Solar was brought in to help reduce their power costs through solar PV solutions. Not only did the sustainable energy solutions provider guarantee them a 20% saving by shifting to solar, Spenomatic also noticed additional savings opportunities, such as running the pumps during peak hours of the day instead of the traditional nighttime usage which helped this customer save even more than expected.
Over 500,000 units of electricity are now generated annually by this solar power plant, allowing the client to save more than 40% on their power cost (higher than any other industry simply due to the shift in running pumps from nighttime to peak hours of the day). This plant will reduce more than 12,000 tons of CO2 over its lifetime, thereby enabling Africa to improve its overall carbon footprint.
Furthermore, since installing this particular plant, Spenomatic Solar managed to assist several players within this industry in saving costs. The end result was lower cost of production, allowing for greater savings and ultimately further growth in this industry in the long run. Being one of the largest contributors to the Kenyan economy, such growth will provide tremendous job opportunities, increased household incomes, and overall, better the standards of living across the country.
ABOUT SPENOMATIC SOLAR: Established in Kenya in 1998, Spenomatic is a group of over 200 technocrats from diverse fields, contributing to empower Africa in the energy and environment sector. It is the current market leader in providing solar photovoltaic solutions in East Africa, with more than 50 million KW of cumulative energy installations across the group, and is slowly expanding its base across the continent.
Source: marcopolis
