Summary

Madagascar is the largest island state in Africa and the fourth largest island in the world. With the equivalent of 440 US dollars a year¹, the annual gross national income per capita is far below the average of the other African states south of the Sahara. Only about 15% of the Madagascan have an electricity connection, in the rural areas less than one out of ten persons². Cooking with firewood and coal as well as the common practice of slash-and-burn clearances, unfortunately, contribute to the rapid deforestation of the island: between the years 1950 and 2000, 40% of the forest area has already disappeared, accompanied by a reduction of the “core forest” by almost 80%³ (more than one kilometer from a non-forest edge).

Since 2019, atmosfair has been financing several renewable energy projects in Madagascar and wants to show further investors that a sustainable energy turnaround is possible on the island.

Annual combustion of 8.8 million liters of heavy fuel oil in the existing heavy fuel oil power plant in the city of Toliara

Toliara is the largest city in the south of the island. Up to now, only the 21 MW heavy fuel oil power plant close to the city center supplied the approximately 250,000 inhabitants with electricity. However, the electricity production costs are very high and must be subsidized by the state with up to 70%. And also the ecological balance of such oil-fired power plants is catastrophic. The Toliara oil-fired power plant produced so far annually approximately 34 million kilowatt-hours of electricity and burned thereby approximately 8.8 million liters oil in the year. In Germany, this corresponds to the annual electricity consumption of approximately 8,500 households with four people. Each of these households would thus need more than 1,000 liters of oil per year to cover its electricity needs alone.

Atmosfair finances the construction of a 2.9 MW solar plant and avoids the emission of 4,000 tons of CO2 per year

atmosfair has significantly co-financed the installation of a 2.9 MW solar power plant through a low-interest loan to the company Akuo Energy. The plant will feed its clean electricity directly into a medium voltage field of the heavy fuel oil power plant, thus avoiding the combustion of approximately 1.3 million liters of heavy fuel oil per year.

Our French solar partner is using a very special concept: “déplier et brancher”: local construction workers will pull the solar modules from the “Solar GEM®” container as if from an accordion box and then fold it up slightly on the pre-laid rails. In this way, a large photovoltaic surface is created within a very short time, even without having to erect steel scaffolding beforehand. And: the cabling is also included, so that the modules can be easily connected to each other to form a large system through plug&play ⁴.

Thanks to the high level of solar radiation in Madagascar, the solar system can ensure the average power requirement of at least 20,000 Madagascans and avoid the emission of around 4,000 tons of CO2. That is about the same amount as 2,000 German petrol cars emit every year.

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