Kenya PV Capacity Building Project

The difficulties experienced in transforming the Kenya PV market, and emerging issues, led to the EMT taking the exceptional action of seeking IFC/GEF approval for a Capacity Building Project for the Kenya PV market. During the first few years of PVMTI implementation, it became clear that several inter-related actions were necessary to create the necessary environment for growth of the sector, and that injection of loan funds into the market by PVMTI would not achieve its objectives without these preceding actions.

Therefore, in 2006, the US$ 0.3m PVMTI-funded Kenya PV Capacity Project (KPVCP) was launched. The project involves the simultaneous implementation of 5 inter-related capacity building activities:

development and deployment of a standard curriculum for PV technical training,
completion of training courses for PV technicians, entrepreneurs and to a lesser extent, training of trainers,
market awareness activities to boost the profile of PV and increase awareness of quality issues,
a quality assurance initiative to field test performance of Solar Home Systems (“SHS”), and
financial support for Kenya Renewable Energy Association (KEREA), a recently formed industry association representing the Kenyan PV sector

The project is being implemented by multiple sponsors. Sponsors will leverage PVMTI Grant funds by a minimum 1:3, i.e. PVMTI will fund 75% of the total cost of each activity.

The project is a special one-off initiative to address the following market issues in the Kenyan PV sector:

Curriculum Development and Deployment

The aim of this activity is to develop a standard technical training curriculum for technicians and entrepreneurs for adoption by the entire PV industry as the base-line training requirement. These curricula will also form the basis for training courses under the project.

Parallel to development of the curriculum will be the preparation of 3 technical manuals: (i) a PV sellers guide, (ii) an installer’s guide and (iii) a user’s guide. These will provide each user group with easy access to an appropriate level of knowledge on technical issues.

Both the training curriculum and technical manuals will be housed in KEREA, which will manage adoption by the industry as the training standard. KEREA will also develop a register of recognised PV trainers considered eligible to deliver the curriculum and will spearhead attempts to have the curriculum incorporated into vocational courses at mainstream technical colleges.

Technical Training

Building on the curriculum development activity, a range of courses will be provided to boost technical skills at all levels of the PV delivery chain: Training of trainers in PV companies, technical upgrade of dealers and non-specialist vendors, and training of installation technicians.

Market Awareness

This will involve industry level initiatives, grass roots media campaign, regional solar days and PV company marketing initiatives.

Quality Assurance

KEREA will purchase a mobile testing unit and will test a random sample of installations in the field to check (i) quality of new installations and (ii) performance of systems over time. The results of this testing will be communicated back to the PV companies to enable remedial action and will feed into the market awareness activities to reward the supplier with highest technical quality.

KEREA Secretariat Support

KEREA is a new industry association aiming to represent the Kenyan PV sector with a unified voice and to assist in the enforcement of quality standards. The project will avail financial support to KEREA to enhance its secretariat and to undertake the activities in which it has a role as outlined above.