FEATURE : ENERGY
Building skills in asset management to deliver intelligent energy grids
Renewable energies require a more service-centric business model than traditional fossil fuel power stations , and this calls for aftermarket contracts with OEMs to manage servicing of assets says Heman Kassan at Technodyn International .
The world faces a power crisis , but as the saying goes , Africa gets the flu when the world catches a cold . This is all too true as a recent report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development , highlights that access to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa is the lowest in the world , which it attributes , in part to the lack of reliable grids to distribute electricity to consumers .
And where a grid exists , they are often outdated , unstable and do not support effective customer connections . To put the numbers in perspective , the report , Commodities at a glance : Special issue on access to energy in sub-Saharan Africa , says that globally , 733 million people , or about 9.1 % of the world ’ s population , lack access to electricity , World
Bank , 202a . However , closer to home in Sub-Saharan Africa , around 600 million , 53 % of the population live without access to electricity and further hundreds of millions with limited or unreliable electricity .
Beyond the billions required to correct the infrastructure issue , there is a more reliable and pervasive way to get power to the people . And that is through leveraging technology and renewable energies in a continent that currently boasts 60 % of the world ’ s best global solar resources .
Renewable energies are no longer a plan for future . They are a reality that already makes up a significant portion of the global energy supply . In Kenya , renewable energy sources , including geothermal ,
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