MASVINGO – Global Solar Chief Executive Officer Jeffree Rugare has called for stricter regulations and monitoring to ensure that unregulated lighting products don’t flood the local market.
Rugare who heads one of Zimbabwe’s leading renewable energy and energy efficiency company said this during a ZERA organised net metering and energy efficiency stakeholder awareness workshop held at Flamboyant, a Regency Group hotel on Wednesday.
Global Solar is a Zimbabwean company which also manufactures LED bulbs, LED tubes and candle lights and is into the region in Malawi and Zambia. Global Solar is also into design and installation of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.
Rugare said the unregulated products finding their way onto the market are of poor quality and this destroys customers’ confidence on the product. They also distort market prices and shrink the market for registered and genuine companies
He urged the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) to continue their in-shop testing programme and ban the products.
Rugare also spoke about challenges in the sector and said that they need to be attended to. The problems include load shedding, skills shortage, unavailability of raw material locally and duty on led products entering the country.
As a way forward he called on the total removal of duty on LED products coming in as a raw material. He called on Universities to tailor make their programmes to support the industry.
Global Solar has the capacity to produce 1,2 million bulbs, candle lights and downlights annually and can produce 400 000 LED tubes.
The net metering and energy efficiency awareness workshops which are being carried out nationwide are meant to consientise the public about net metering and to address the country’s electricity supply deficit.
Net metering is a billing mechanism that credits solar energy system owners for the electricity they add to the grid.
Global solar, one of the leading LED supplies in the country also has establishments in Zambia and Malawi.
The company which specialises in solar energy products and services is also an engineering firm into manufacturing, design and installation of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. – The Mirror
