Mauritius – smart meters and solar PV for homes and businesses

Mauritius’ Central Electricity Board (CEB) reports islandwide rollout of smart meters and two solar PV initiatives.

The state-owned power supplier has reported that some 50,000 smart meters have been installed to date and the remainder will be implemented gradually over the course of the next few years.

In addition to the replacements, new connections will be installed with smart meters.

In total there are over 465,000 electricity customers in Mauritius, according to the CEB’s data.

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Alongside this the CEB has launched two solar PV schemes each with targets of 10MW of capacity – one for domestic customers of which the CEB will be the off-taker and one for domestic, commercial and industrial customer premises connected to the LV grid to support the charging of electric vehicles (EVs).

The CEB will advise eligible customers on the allowed capacity of each individual solar PV installation up to a maximum of 5kWp for the domestic scheme and 10kWp for the EV scheme.

Part of the investment cost for the purchase of the domestic solar PV system can be financed by a ‘green’ loan from commercial banks or a concessional loan from the Development Bank of Mauritius. Eligible customers also can benefit from an income tax deduction under the Solar Energy Investment Allowance.

Applications received that are in excess of the 10MW capacity allocated to the schemes will be placed on a waiting list.

Goals of the schemes, which were announced in the country’s budget in June, include supporting the reduction of CO2 emissions and the achievement of renewable energy targets, including 35% and 60% shares in the electricity mix by 2025 and 2030 respectively.

The schemes also support democratising the electricity generation business by supporting customers to engage in electricity production, according to the CEB, which will purchase the electricity generated over 20 years.

With the launch of these schemes, earlier schemes including the Medium-Scale Distributed Generation (MSDG) Renewable Energy Scheme, the Public Sector Entities Renewable Energy Scheme and the Smart City Renewable Energy Scheme are closed from 31 December 2021.