'Africa is moving toward the world’s most distributed grids'

Q: What’s one finding from this report that strikes you the most?

A: The key finding for me is the sheer size and scale of distributed solar PV. It’s 75% of all solar that has been built in Africa. We estimated that between 2023 and 2025, Africa deployed about 26 GW of solar, with 20 GW of that figure estimated to be behind the meter.

Q: The report points out that official reporting for national solar capacity in some African countries is barely existent. What are the real life consequences of this?

A: The most immediate impact is on energy planning. Planners typically use least-cost models to determine how much capacity is needed over the next 5 to 10 years, then lock in long-term PPAs with independent power producers. When you plan based on incomplete data, your demand forecasts are wrong. Unquantified daytime solar generation changes load patterns significantly. You end up overestimating peak demand and the capacity you need to bring online to meet it. That leads to costly mistakes, such as utilities signing rigid 20-year take-or-pay contracts without accounting for capacity already installed. In five years, they could find themselves locked into paying for power they don't need.

The problem extends to real-time grid management. System operators forecast generation and demand day-ahead to maintain balance, but they can't do that confidently when they have no visibility into distributed solar capacity they can't control. If they need to curtail generation, they end up cutting large farms while leaving invisible small systems untouched, which creates inefficiencies across the entire grid. The consequences ripple across planning, operations, regulation and tariff-setting.

Q: The report highlights the dominance of the C&I sector. Is there still room for this market segment to grow, and for companies working in this sector to capitalise?

A: Yes, there's substantial room to grow. The conventional assumption is that rooftop solar displaces diesel generators but recent research from the Energy for Growth Hub found something different. They quantified diesel generator capacity across Sub-Saharan Africa going back to 2014 and found that rather than declining, diesel capacity has continued growing. That suggests we're not yet seeing replacement; we're seeing addition. Rooftop solar is meeting newly unleashed demand that was previously suppressed or unmet.

This is significant because if distributed solar is opening up demand rather than simply displacing diesel, then there's still enormous untapped potential. Plenty of businesses still rely on diesel because they couldn't afford reliable grid electricity or solar before. As solar and batteries become cheaper, that suppressed demand converts to actual consumption. The C&I sector has far to go before saturation. There's still massive room to grow.

Q: You previously described Africa's transition toward distributed energy resources as 'chaotic and disruptive'. Can you explain how this disruption materialises?

A: Most energy plans across Africa still don't adequately account for distributed solar PV. If they include it at all, it's treated as peripheral. They assume top-down, government-led grid expansion but that's not what's happening on the ground. Instead, distributed solar is being deployed haphazardly, driven by immediate crises such as unreliable electricity, lack of access and high costs. People respond to those pressures as best they can, and they're succeeding. This reflects Africa's history of finding ways around broken infrastructure.

The chaos lies in the disconnect. What's actually being built bears little resemblance to what planners designed or sequenced. In developed countries, rooftop solar grew largely through subsidies and financial incentives. In Africa, it's driven by necessity and physics, which are factors planners can't control.

The disruption is more fundamental. Africa is moving toward the world's most distributed grids. That requires rethinking grid architecture entirely. You cannot run a highly distributed grid using models borrowed from France or the UK. Those frameworks were built for centralized systems. Africa needs new tools and governance structures adapted to its specific context of widespread energy poverty, limited access, and completely different challenges. We can't simply apply rules designed elsewhere. We need to reinvent them.

Q: Looking ahead, what should be the goal for distributed solar in Africa?

A: The goal is to integrate distributed solar in a way that benefits the grid as a whole, not just individual users. Right now, people and businesses deploy rooftop solar to solve their own energy problems. That's understandable and necessary given the energy crisis, but it's fundamentally individualistic.

We have a window of opportunity to change that. We can develop frameworks, regulations, and policies that coordinate these resources for collective benefit. Models like virtual power plants and virtual net metering exist elsewhere, but we can't simply adopt them wholesale. Africa faces different challenges and any approach needs to be adapted to local conditions.

Reinventing grid architecture for Africa is essential. We need tools and governance structures designed for highly distributed systems in our specific context, not borrowed wholesale from developed markets.

Q: What is the most important shift in mindset that you would ask for players in Africa's solar market in order to reach the goals?

A: We need to stop thinking about rooftop solar as an individual system meeting one person's energy needs. Instead, we should see it as capable of providing services to the broader society. Consider net metering rules that already exist in some African countries. I have solar on my roof in the city; I generate excess during the day and get credited for what I feed back to the grid. But my mother in a village still struggles to afford electricity. What if those net metering rules allowed me to direct my credits to her, or to anyone I choose? That shifts the arrangement from just me and the utility to a tripartite one that lifts someone out of energy poverty.

Or imagine a business deciding that excess midday solar feeds into a benefits package for employees: free electricity simply for working there- These innovations don't exist yet, but they're engineering problems, not impossibilities. They require sophisticated billing systems, but that's achievable.

Q: If you think ahead to five years time, what would you want to see that would tell you that the uptake of distributed energy sources had gone well?

A: My first metric of success would be seeing regulations pop up across the continent to govern distributed solar. This is already beginning through the Mission 300 program. Several more are in draft stages and should be announced within the year.

Net metering isn't new. Some countries, like Kenya and Ghana, have had these rules for years but kept them inactive because the market was dormant. Now the pressure is real and coming from everywhere. Customers knock on regulators' doors daily asking when rules will be operationalized. Utilities see systems sprouting across their service areas during routine maintenance but have no visibility into who installed them or what standards they meet.

The reality is the transition is happening whether regulators like it or not. Either they catch up with regulations and permitting, or they cede control to an unmanaged rollout. Both paths lead somewhere; regulation just makes sure it happens safely.

I don't expect regulations to match market velocity as the sector is moving too fast. But success in five years means countries rising to the challenge and putting policies in place that promote distributed solar while protecting grid security and public safety.

Sources: Ember, Africa Tech Futures Lab