Caterserve, a food manufacturer based in Windhoek, Namibia, now operates a 100% solar-powered plant. The company recently acquired a 200 kWp off-grid solar system.
In Namibia, the plant of food manufacturer Caterserve is now 100% solar-powered. The company acquired a 200 kWp off-grid solar system in early February 2020. It was installed by SolarSaver, a provider of custom rooftop solar photovoltaic solutions in Namibia and South Africa. The off grid (electric) solar system will enable Caterserve to increase its production.
Prior to the installation of the small solar power plant on the rooftop of its factory, the company produced more than 1000 bottles of tomato sauce and mayonnaise. “We realised that we needed more energy, which the municipality couldn’t reliably provide,” says Nic Geldenhuys of Caterserve. “The SolarSaver solution required no upfront investment on our part. We work well with off-grid solar power and have reduced our electricity costs,” he says.
SolarSaver took six months to install the solar off grid on Caterserve’s roof. “To ensure that we could reach 200kWp and meet all of Caterserve’s energy needs, we installed 600 Canadian Solar panels with a capacity of 330 W each. A 200 kW inverter and a 300 kWh Lithium-Ion battery,” explains Stefan Kleemann of SolarSaver. SolarSaver provides maintenance, monitoring and insurance for Caterserve’s off-grid solar power plant.
The new installation expands SolarSaver’s portfolio, which has already installed more than 170 solar off grids in Namibia and South Africa. Most of these are offered on a lease-to-purchase basis. This is the case, for example, at the Lynnwood Lane shopping centre in Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa. A mini solar power plant was built in this centre in January 2020 by SolarSaver. The installation, which took one month to build, consists of 872 panels connected to each other by solar inverters. The entire photovoltaic system has a capacity of 1,364 MWp. The mini-solar power plant supplies electricity to the shopping centre’s 22 stores, providing 18% of the 7,507 kWh of electricity needed for the operation of the shopping centre.
Inès Magoum
