5. Thoughts

An energy business would be as much investing in the country as in any physical hardware, land or infrastructure

How do we estimate the costs of running a solar farm?

• Capital costs
  • Land
  • Solar panel arrays
  • Inverters, transformers, monitoring, structure
  • Other electrical components?
  • Delivery, tax, duty
  • Installation cost
  • Infrastructure costs of connection to grid?
• Running costs
  • Cleaning
  • Security
  • Maintenance
  • Licensing
• Depreciation
  • Lifespan of 25 years depending on hardware

What are the options for building a solar farm?

1. Find an international solar developer willing to do a project in Malawi
   • Unlikely to generate a reasonable return due to high cost
2. Train myself in electrical and solar installation then hire labour locally and manage installation myself
   • Likely to take several years
   • Would require living in Malawi for an extended period of time
3. Find African expertise, for example in South Africa
   • South Africa is unknown territory, so hard to find and negotiate with developers
4. Find local electricians and then fund their solar training abroad
   • Where would they train, and for how long?
   • Risk of overseeing the project ourselves with no experience and newly trained workers
5. Same as 4. above, but hire a consultancy to design the build
   • Reduces risk of build
   • Source materials ourselves, but get consultancy to validate
   • Potentially ask consultancy to validate installation at different stages
   • How much would such a service cost?
   • Requires living in Malawi during build

Does Malawi make sense? Based on thoughts so far:

• Malawi
  • Con - Risk of developing country
  • Con - No local expertise
  • Con - Materials would have to be imported
  • Pro - Good levels of solar radiation
  • Pro- Probably low bureaucracy
• UK
  • Con - Low levels of solar radiation
  • Con - Labour is expensive
  • Con - High levels of bureaucracy
  • Pro - Plenty of local expertise
  • Pro - Home country
• Germany
  • Con - Low levels of solar radiation
  • Con - Labour is expensive
  • Pro - Plenty of local expertise
  • Pro - Land is potentially less expensive than UK
  • Pro - Potentially better subsidies than UK?
• China
  • Con - Don't yet know enough - subsidies, tariffs, cost of land, bureaucracy?
  • Con - Can't speak the local language
  • Pro - Should have good levels of solar radiation in certain regions
  • Pro - Should have good level of local expertise and not too expensive
  • Pro - Materials can be purchased locally
  • Pro - Would have help finding contacts