We’ve crunched the numbers on our community’s impact on elderly care and we hope you will be proud and inspired about the power of the collective and what we've already achieved together!

Of the close to 70 solar projects completed, 11 have been for retirement homes with our latest crowdsale for Jakaranda Park Retirement Village nearing the 100% funded mark. As our second most popular project type after schools, the numbers below on retirement homes are very heartening.

Not only are retirement homes our best performing projects (exceeding projected energy generated by 9.5%), they’re also yielding significant benefits to their beneficiaries, reducing electricity bills for the homes and providing cell owners with more earnings than projected. On top of that, they’re delivering clean energy and carbon reductions for decades to come.

• Number of retirement facilities solar powered: 11, across 4 South African provinces.
• Total installed solar power: 1.46 MW. That’s >400,000 solar cells, enough to cover a whole soccer pitch.
• Total solar energy generated to date: 2,880,753 kWh. This exceeds the 2,807,908 kWh of solar energy initially forecast, a 9.5% boost on predicted yield.
• The average forecast internal rate of return (IRR) for all retirement homes was 11.68%. The adjusted IRR, accounting for the excess on generation, is 12.80%.
• Approximately 2,400 elderly residents are now benefiting from lower cost energy.
• So far, retirement homes have saved over three-quarters of a million Rand, enough to employ 5 full time health care assistants for a year.

Since 2015, we’ve wanted to accelerate the clean energy transition, starting with those who need it the most – those who educate, those who care, those who farm and those who serve their communities. These numbers show that we’re doing just that – with the indispensable help of our community, which now stretches across 180 countries around the world.

If you want to join us in solar powering even more retirement homes, check out our latest crowdsale, for Jakaranda Park Retirement Village based in Pretoria. At the time of writing, 67% of the solar cells have already been purchased by more than 400 Sun Exchange members.

Join them and join us on this journey and let’s get the energy transition done!