Equatorial Energies: Energy, Efficiency, Employment
Equatorial Energies was founded in 2015 with the aim to provide renewable energy in the most efficient way possible while also helping to address the issue of unemployment in Kenya.
The company describes itself as “a spin-off of the Strathmore Energy Research Centre”. After a year of training, they noticed a gap in the market for effective installation teams. They set out to establish a 100% local company to “implement, rectify and set standards in Solar PV in Sub-Saharan Africa”.
Equatorial Energies was co-founded by Kevin Gaitho who has a background in business and IT from Strathmore University and Evan Kimani who has a background in engineering from Dedan Kimathi University of Technology. “Motivated by the Sustainable Development Goals, EQ aims at addressing the goal of energy SDG7.”
The company offers the service of captive solar plants to reduce electricity consumption and encourage self-reliance in energy generation and consumption. Equatorial Energies takes this a step further “by not only being a provider of RE, but ensuring the consumption of the RE is best utilized in a multi-tiered structure of energy metering, billing and visualization of energy data to encourage optimization of energy use during certain time frames and energy efficiency”.
They do this by helping companies with their energy path: “Based on the client, which energy path do they look for in terms of power sources? Our energy path ensures that the sourcing for the “fuel” is not harmful to the environment; the planet-wide impact is reiterated in equivalence of carbon emissions saved per kWh of solar energy produced”.
The company also helps with energy efficiency: “The consumption of energy is only addressing climate change by how well the energy produced is consumed. Our key advisory service in the development of captive solar plants is to encourage client awareness in terms of usage and the effect of it all”.
Where is EQ headed to? “For the market we are headed to Sub-Saharan Africa, as per our vision. Our existing partnerships are with existing EPC’s, equipment providers, development entities such as Thriive, KCIC and academia. Our goal is to implement 200MW in the next decade and to implement EQ energy management systems for the CNI market”.
