Vodacom Deploys South Africa's Largest Single-Building Solar Array

Published on: 6th Mar 2013

­South Africa's Vodacom has unveiled the largest solar array of panels on a single building in Africa at its offices in Cape Town. The solar array is expected to provide up to three-quarters of all electricity power required by the building during peak production.

The electricity produced will feed into the two main distribution boards and a display panel, installed in the reception area of the building, and will display instantaneous power produced (yield), energy yield and carbon emission savings.

Vodacom's Chief Officer: Corporate Affairs, Maya Makanjee says: "Vodacom recently became a voluntary signatory to the Energy Efficiency Leadership Network which aims to help improve energy efficiency in South Africa. This commitment complements our existing environmental and sustainability efforts to reduce carbon emissions within the organisation by 5% per annum until 2014."

"Through this particular project Vodacom aims to demonstrate that business can take the lead in promoting renewable energy solutions, thereby stimulating the green economy," Makanjee says.

Local companies were appointed to install the solar panels and do the construction work required. The appointment of local firms also provided the opportunity for skills transfer due to the scale of the project and the limited number of skilled technicians that were available to complete the task.

Vodacom also made it a prerequisite for product suppliers to provide training on the technical elements of the installation, resulting in a German engineer providing on-the-job training to locals.

The roof tiles that were removed were donated to a community centre project in the Delft area, ensuring that the roof tiles were re-used.

 

Tags: [vodacom]  [South Africa]