System Design
Most energy equipment in Africa is sold as a product list. A site receives a quotation for panels, an inverter, and a battery, sized from a rough load estimate and a page of assumptions. The system works on the day it is commissioned and disappoints for the rest of its life.
We design first. Before we quote equipment, we establish what the site actually does — which loads run and when, what cannot be allowed to stop, and how the site will grow.
01
An itemised or metered load profile by hour and by season. Which loads are critical, which can be deferred, which are seasonal. On existing sites this includes measured generator runtime and fuel consumption, so the comparison is against what the site is actually spending rather than against an estimate.
Generation, storage, and distribution sized against that profile. Where the decision is a commercial one, we present options at different capital levels and state plainly what each one protects and what it leaves exposed.
Array placement assessed against shading, orientation, and roof or ground conditions. Plant room, battery, and switchgear location. Cable routes and distribution across the site. Charging point placement where electric vehicles are in scope.
Most sites we are asked to power are not a single building. An estate has boreholes, treatment plant, street lighting, a gatehouse, common areas, and individual units. A farm has pumps in the field, a processing shed, and cold storage, often hundreds of metres apart. Generation and storage are only half the system; how power is distributed across the site determines what it costs and whether it can be extended later.
Equipment schedule, protection, and metering, issued in a form an electrical contractor or EPC firm can build from.
What is installed now, what the system is wired to accept later, and the point at which additional array or storage is added. Module-level architecture makes this possible without redesign, and it is usually the difference between a project proceeding and stalling.
As-built documentation, a parts list for the system as installed, and training for the technician or facility team who will live with it.
02
We work alongside a client's own consulting engineers, architects, and EPC contractors where they are appointed, and issue design that fits into their drawing set. Where no consultant is appointed, we carry the design ourselves. We are equally willing to design a system that a client then tenders competitively — though in practice most clients ask us to supply what we have specified, because the same knowledge that produced the design is what makes the parts inventory and the service plan accurate.