January Off-Grid Solar Investment Floors 2014, GTM
Numbers collated by senior editor at Greentech Media, Stephen Lacey, show that $42 million has been invested into off-grid solar companies currently working in developing countries already this year.
Which, for context, equates to roughly two-thirds of all off-grid investments made throughout 2014.
Greentech Media reported towards the end of 2014 that “off-grid solar companies operating in developing countries reached $63.9 million in 2014,” a number that now seems to be severely at risk of being smashed in the next couple of months.
Stephen Lacey, senior editor at Greentech Media, posted about January’s off-grid solar investment numbers on the GTM Solar site, concluding that the investments came from “four different rounds for companies in solar lighting, solar electronics charging and pay-as-you-go financing.”
Just a few weeks ago, to add to the information provided by Greentech, our own Mridul Chadha reported on SunEdison’s plans to install 250 MW of off-grid solar across 5,000 Indian villages. SunEdison will work in conjunction India-based Omnigrid Micropower Company in what has the potential to be “the largest private-sector initiative in the distributed solar power domain for India.”
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Included in Stephen Lacey’s round-up were a $10 million financing round for Greenlight Planet led by Fidelity Growth Partners; $12.45 million in expansion capital was granted to Kenyan mobile payment startup M-KOPA by LGT Venture Philanthropy; the International Financing Corporation provided a loan of $4.5 million to Tanzanian solar lighting firm Off-Grid Electric, which also helped the company close another $2.5 million investment from Cordiant Capital; and late in the month, a $12.6 million venture round completed for Fenix International, a company that sells and finances solar powered battery systems for lightning, mobile phone charging, and the like.
In the end, just over $42 million has been raised in the first month of 2015 alone, and in addition to the promised $500 million loan from the World Bank for India’s Power Grid Corporation, solar developers of all stripes working in developing countries are expecting big things from 2015 — and for good reason.
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