Fiji is making its mark as a leader in renewable energy thanks to an innovative start-up company focusing on supplying energy to the corporate sector. Sunergise is the brain-child of entrepreneurs from Africa and the Pacific and has attracted investment interest from the World Bank as well as from Australia, New Zealand, North America and China. Before Sunergise came along, the Port of Denarau Marina looked at installing solar but decided it was too difficult.
“As a marina business we are very intrinsically tied to the environment and climate change and we want to make a difference,” said Nigel Skeggs, managing director of the Port of Denarau Marina. “But for us to install a multi-million-dollar solar system was not our core complement.”
The installation of the first 700 photovoltaic cells at the marina was completed in 2012, just two days before Cyclone Evan hit, with winds gusting up to 270 kph.
Only one panel was damaged. Sunergise has since completed two more installations at the Port of Denarau, creating the biggest marina-based solar plant in the world.
Australia ‘well behind’
In Australia, corporate solar is lagging behind residential investment and Sunergise is something advocacy group Solar Citizens would like to see more of.
“Australia leads the world in terms of residential roof-top solar,” Solar Citizen consumer campaigner Reece Turner said.
“Mums and dads have invested $8 billion of their own money in solar panels in just the last six or seven years. But we are well behind in the commercial space; comparatively we are probably 20th or 30th in the world in terms of commercial solar.
“That is where we are seeing some of the growth now but we really need to incentivise that uptake of commercial solar.”
Source: ab.co/2942nuF