Ideas and analysis for better solar decisions
Practical writing from field assignments, technical reviews, and program design work. Intended for institutional teams making real procurement, implementation, and investment decisions.
Solar for Health Facilities: A Practical Planning Guide
What planners, donors, and ministries get wrong about sizing solar for clinics and hospitals — and a field-tested framework to get it right the first time.
- 01Most clinic solar systems are sized on nameplate equipment loads, not measured consumption. Result: 40–60% oversize on PV, 25% undersize on autonomy.
- 02Cold chain and theatre loads dictate autonomy days, not daily kWh. Plan for the worst 72 hours, not the average day.
- 03Procurement must bundle PV + storage + 3 years of O&M into a single performance contract; unbundled tenders fail within 18 months.
Why Solar Projects Fail After Installation
Post-mortems from 60 failed or underperforming installations point to four recurring causes — none of them technical.
Designing M&E Systems for Off-Grid Public Infrastructure
Monitoring is the cheapest insurance an off-grid program can buy — yet most programs ship without it. A reference architecture for hardware, telemetry, and accountability.
Procurement Risks in Donor-Funded Solar Programs
A pattern analysis of 24 donor-funded solar tenders across East Africa and the Sahel — and the structural choices that quietly shape outcomes years later.
What Feasibility Studies Often Miss in Fragile Contexts
The technical content of a feasibility study is usually adequate. The contextual content — security, logistics, institutional continuity — is usually decorative.
Solar Water Pumping in Sudan: Design and Maintenance Considerations
Solar water pumping is the most cost-effective off-grid water solution in Sudan when designed for local conditions — and the most expensive when it is not.
From EPC Delivery to Program Assurance: A Better Model for Solar Scale-Up
EPC contracting delivers individual installations. It does not deliver programs. At scale, the gap shows up as a long tail of underperforming sites no one can fix.
How to Evaluate Solar EPC Bids Beyond the Lowest Price
A practical scoring framework that has been used on tenders ranging from a single clinic to a 180-site portfolio.
Battery Autonomy, Maintenance, and Real-World Reliability
Datasheet cycle life is a marketing number. Real cycle life in Sudan conditions is 40–60% of nameplate. Design accordingly.
Building Solar Programs That Can Survive Field Conditions
What we have learned, in plain language, from designing and assuring solar programs in places where the easy choices do not work.
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