Sun King Seeks $1.3 Billion to Bring Power to 200 Million People
(Bloomberg) -- Sun King, the world’s largest off-grid solar company, said it plans to raise $1.3 billion to give access to electricity to 200 million Africans by 2030.
The Kenya-based company, which has raised $700 million to date, will recycle the capital by selling pay-as-you-go solar devices and by 2030 plans to have supplied more than $5.6 billion of equipment in addition to what it has already sold, it said in a response to queries.
Africa has almost 600 million people, or more than 80% of the global total, without power. The company, founded in 2007 as Greenlight Planet by three University of Illinois graduates, supplies an array of equipment including the batteries and small solar panels used across Africa where access to national grids is limited and power supply is often erratic.
“Off-grid solar is already scaling at unprecedented speed,” T. Patrick Walsh, one of Sun King’s founders, said on Friday in a statement coinciding with a pledging event for electricity access ahead of the Group of 20 leaders’ summit in Johannesburg. It’s a way of “bringing clean, affordable electricity to hundreds of millions of people faster than ever before,” he said.
It will raise the funds through debt and equity, the company said. The aim is to boost the number of its retail stores in Africa to more than 1,650 from about 450 today and sell products capable of generating 3,800 megawatts of power.
Sun King operates in 11 African countries and plans to expand into more, it said. By 2030 it aims to supply more than a million solar kits a month, up from 330,000 today and 10,000 in 2017. It has sold products to more than 50 million people to date. The products are paid for over one to two years in regular installments.
The expansion comes amid a drive to boost electricity access in Africa. The World Bank and African Development Bank are heading up the so-called Mission 300 program where tens of billions of dollars may be spent bringing power to 300 million Africans by 2030.
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