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New publication: Practical operation and maintenance manual for Solar PV Systems

New publication: Practical operation and maintenance manual for Solar PV Systems

by | Sep 10, 2025 | News

Are you a technician, a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) proprietor, or an ordinary consumer looking to master the operation and maintenance of your solar photovoltaic (PV) systems? Look no further!

Introducing the Practical operation and and Maintenance manual for Solar PV: A Comprehensive Guide to Efficient Solar Energy Management and Maintenance, a new publication from the SESA project (Smart Energy Solution for Africa) – Authors: Engr. Dr Albert Kotawoke Awopone, Prof Isaac Boateng, Akenten Appiah-Menka University of Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development (AAMUSTED); Edem Foli, Nelson Mandela University (NMU); Silvia Assalini (ICLEI Europe).

This capacity-building manual is your go-to resource for optimising the efficiency, safety, and longevity of your solar PV systems.

What You’ll Gain from This Manual:

  • Valuable Insights for SMEs: Learn the necessary knowledge and skills to optimise energy efficiency, regulate costs, and ensure the longevity of your solar PV systems.
  • Comprehensive Maintenance Guidance: Get extensive, step-by-step instructions on routine maintenance, troubleshooting common issues, and knowing when to call for expert help.
  • Empowerment for All Users: Whether you’re a homeowner or a small business proprietor, this manual will deepen your understanding of your solar PV system’s fundamental operation, performance monitoring, and environmental benefits.
  • Safety First: The manual highlights essential safety protocols to protect individuals interacting with the systems and to prevent accidents.

Key Advantages:

  • Cost Savings: Educate yourself on optimal strategies to operate and maintain your system, which helps eliminate unnecessary expenditures on repairs and wasted energy.
  • Sustainable Practices: By promoting a deeper understanding of solar PV systems, the manual supports the overarching goal of reducing carbon footprints and advancing green energy solutions.
  • Adherence to Standards: The guide assists users in adhering to both domestic and international benchmarks, ensuring your system is up to par.
  • A Practical Resource: This is an indispensable guide for anyone involved in solar PV systems, offering practical, efficient, and security-focused advice.

Empower yourself and embrace sustainable energy with this essential new guide.

Download the manual

Community-Based Futuring: Towards Alternative and Meaningful Green Energy-Enabled Rural Futures

by | Sep 10, 2025 | Scientific publication

Community-Based Futuring: Towards Alternative and Meaningful Green Energy-Enabled Rural Futures

Abstract

Energy exclusion is prevalent throughout Africa, leading to a myriad of energy access projects, technologies, interventions and approaches being explored to address a phenomenon affecting over half the continent’s predominantly rural population. This is exhibited in a recent EU-funded energy access project involving partners, researchers and communities working across many African countries employing various approaches. In this paper, we unfold the employment of two divergent approaches, requirements elicitation and community-based co-design, in an attempt to determine and advance green energy inclusion and innovative use in a low-income, off-grid rural Namibian community. Thereafter, we reflect on the use of each approach, highlighting the need for an elevated and provocative approach that enables innovative and unorthodox energy inclusion permitting energy access and productive use in rural African communities.

 

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Inclusion of Namibian rural communities in green energy access and use: Requirements elicitation or community-based-co-design?

by | Sep 10, 2025 | Scientific publication

Inclusion of Namibian rural communities in green energy access and use: Requirements elicitation or community-based-co-design?

Abstract

Energy exclusion is prevalent throughout Africa, leading to a myriad of energyaccess projects, technologies, interventions and approaches being explored to address a phenomenon affecting over half the continent’s predominantly rural population. This is exhibited in a recent EU-funded energy access project involving partners, researchers and communities working across many African countries employing various approaches. In this paper, we unfold the employment of two divergent approaches, requirements elicitation and community-based co-design, in an attempt to determine and advance green energy inclusion and innovative use in a low-income, off-grid rural Namibian community. Thereafter, we reflect on the use of each approach, highlighting the need for an elevated and provocative approach that enables innovative and unorthodox energy inclusion permitting energy access and productive use in rural African communities.

 

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Recovering lost futures of the past: Situating alternative futures within an indigenous Afrocentric orientation and past trajectory

by | Sep 10, 2025 | Scientific publication

Recovering lost futures of the past: Situating alternative futures within an indigenous Afrocentric orientation and past trajectory

Abstract

This paper, contributing to decolonial design and futuring practice, promotes and explores the recovery of lost futures of the past. Through a series of sessions in a rural indigenous community in Southern Africa, we employ the Chameleon Innovation game as a participatory and community-based ideation method to co-design alternative future innovations and possibilities. The game, as an avenue through which participants accentuate lost indigenous cultural practices from the past, extends an Afrocentric indigenous orientation and past trajectory, enabling participants to actively engage these practices and situate alternative futures. This widens the spectrum within which futures and technologies are co-designed, enabling community participants to actively conceptualise alternative, yet situated, innovations in rural indigenous contexts.

 

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