Solar-Training-Centre

The first two trainings took place at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, and further sessions were held at the CSIR in Pretoria, with 50 participants each. The attendees were local government officials from various utilities (municipalities) across South Africa. The training covered aspects such as distributed generation (DG), its benefits for the country like job creation, reducing dependence on fossil fuels, dealing with power outages (load shedding), how DG can impact the national grid, and how to process and approve DG in their network in a sustainable way. It also covered concepts like setting up export tariffs and installing the correct bidirectional meter to compensate consumers who want to feed their green solar energy into the grid.

According to GIZ, a key training funder, this training and capacity building programme is one of their best and most impactful programmes in Africa. The impact SUNCybernetics and Sustainable Energy Africa was making in South Africa, was so profound and effective, that Germany based GET.transform, supported by GIZ, wanted to roll out the same training and capacity building model out to other African Countries. The first cohort of 6 countries included Namibia, Uganda, Madagascar, Mozambique Lesotho and Eswatini. There is a potential for this programme to roll out soon to 10 African Countries in total.

The training for the African Countries, focused more on developing a draft template regulation for distributed generation as well as utility requirements for DG to connect to their respective grids. The training was quite challenging, as the existing grid codes, regulations, stakeholders, approaches and even their languages were different. Translation services had to be used for the first time to effectively communicate and convey the same message. The training was still well received and the hope is that other African Countries will be able to capitalise on their new knowledge and capabilities to open the market for DG in a sustainable way.

Feedback from International DG Training
“I commend you for the support given to the various countries; while addressing the real issues and following up (each training session is a build up to the next step) The continuous efforts to get feedback and needs of each country tailor made, ensure relevance of all content The daily recap of principles in a fun interactive way is invaluable for the participants” –

The ministry of education and the King and Queen of the royal family of the Netherlands engaged our team and other stakeholders, in a workshop which discussed the just energy transition to green energy and it challenges in South Africa.

Nicolaas Faure van Schalkwyk, Manager of the Solar Training Centre, highlighted the importance of how practical up to date industry experience, needs to form part of the training curriculum and experience. "Education institutions are too slow and not dynamic enough to adapt their qualifications to the fast-changing environment in the renewable energy sector. Training providers in collaboration with international industry experience from SUNFarming and technology service providers like Brainstud, can reach more people and assist with making people more employable with micro courses, skills programmes and part qualifications. South Africa has elevated levels of unemployment, but there is also a need for experienced solar PV installers. Something which we in partnership with Johan Schaap from
Brainstud try to achieve"

-I had a wonderful lifetime experience , as a not so technically person I truly have to say @Faure van Schalkwyk you are a super teacher / facilitator...@Anelda you are fantastic administrator. Thank you guys for a super experience and everyone whom I met , never was made to feel like I was less qualified thank you guys . I pray we all succeed in our future endeavors and may our paths meet again as we grow in the industry.. God bless you all Gentleman. Even me as a technical person really learned a lot.
-Thank you to all and for everything Faure and Anelda. You are legends.
-Yes. Thank you all. Learned an awful lot. Laughed and worried. You are very wise men with many years of knowledge and experience. Thank you Anelda for all your hard work and Faure. I will come and do it with you again anytime. It was awfully nice
-Best online Presenters i have experience - kept once attention at all times
-They have given us a good content and very easy to grasp. They interacted with everyone well
-They are all prepared and professional
-Very impressed with the presenters' ability to stimulate participation. Kudos to the team for the video training setup which I think is quite effective.
- ...it is always a pleasure to attend SSEG courses. Faure, Dr Botha and Josh are fantastic and is professional

You can find out more about the Solar Training Center here