Here it is! Our first Sunex Video Diary of 2022. It’s been an incredible start to 2022, with many projects fully funded and under construction thanks to you, our community!

In This Episode:

• Welcome
• Earth Day Competition
• Karoo Fresh updates
• News from Nhimbe Fresh
• Installation updates from other projects
• Crowdsales news
• Platform upgrades

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the first episode of Sun Exchange video diaries in 2022. A lot of amazing things have been happening in the first quarter of this year. This is your chance to catch up on everything that's been going on!

We’re heartened by the Earth Day theme of Invest in our planet this year, and it could not be more relevant to Sun Exchange. To mark the occasion, we're giving away free solar cells in our Karoo Fresh solar project. For every solar cell you purchase in the project, you will get the chance to win up to 100 free solar cells. That's 100 free solar cells in our first ever off-grid solar project that will earn a lucky winner 20 years of solar powered income! In addition, on behalf of the first prize winner, Sun Exchange will make a donation of 150 solar cells to our charity partner, African Parks to support its work to conserve some of the world's most delicate and crucial wildlife areas. The giveaway ends at the end of April, so don't miss out. Check out our social media channels and blog for more details.

Speaking of Karoo Fresh, the crowdsale for this fantastic project is now over 50% complete. Our first ever 100% off-grid solar project, Karoo Fresh is at the very forefront of climate resilient, sustainable agriculture. Last month, we ran a community call with the founder and CEO of Karoo Fresh, Eric Brown. Check out the really fascinating call on our YouTube channel to get some insights into the farm and the amazing work they’re doing. And so with that, and the Earth Day raffle coming up, there truly is no better time to get involved with this project.

The other ‘fresh’ project is Nhimbe Fresh. Their cold store in the packhouse has been energised since December last year, and since then the project has been running very well. Currently the project is in early energisation phase, so any of you powering this project your earnings to date are a bonus because the 20 year lease kicks in after final acceptance of the project, which is happening imminently. The Sun Exchange team visited the project in January to check in with Edwin Moyo and the rest of his team. And this is what they had to say about it:

Lisa Lyhne: "Nhimbe Fresh has a strong commitment to environmental issues. They’ve achieved their goal while, at the same time, receiving reliable and affordable energy from the Sun Exchange community."

Saul Wainwright: "Zimbabwe is in desperate need of better power sources. We're helping this farm continue to provide jobs and nice fresh food to the local economy".

Edwin Moyo:" We will make sure that this works and that the organisation goes on for a long term. It's not about ourselves only, it's about future generations as well. The significance of the Nhimbe Fresh project cannot be underestimated. In fact, the news of this project going live was picked up by Bloomberg, Coindesk and many other news outlets who picked up on the true financial innovation behind Sun Exchange that enables a global community to enable sustainable agriculture in Africa. So thank you everyone for taking part."

Some other solar installation updates for you. Anyone powering Kingsway High School or Avontuur Wine Estate, both those projects are now live and earning you solar powered income. For those waiting for your installations at Carpe Diem High School and York High School installation is now well under way. And you should also be earning very soon from those projects. The Bo Karoo solar project construction is also well under way. And we expect completion of that project at the end of April.

Some also fantastic news for those who've been waiting patiently for their solar cells to be installed at Outerwest Recycling. Our team visited that site last month to kick off the installation process. So thank you all for your patience as well to get this really truly brilliant project installed.

If you ever need an update on a project you are waiting to get installed, you can always check your Sun Exchange dashboard where we give you regular updates on the installation progress. We also send out email updates at least once a month telling you about the installation progress. So if you've got any questions, you can go to those places or please reach out to us through our website.

Crowdsale news!

The Outeniqua High School crowdsale sold out in the blink of an eye in less than eight hours. For those of you who managed to get your solar cells in that project, congratulations! You'll be receiving an update email very soon telling you what the next steps are on that project. We're also very excited this month to have launched two new solar projects for CPOA, which is the Cape Peninsula Organisation for the Aged. This is an amazing chain of retirement home facilities. Keep an eye out for those projects.

For those of you already generating solar power through Sun exchange, you will have received in your inbox last month your annual solar energy production report. This will have detailed how your solar power plants have been performing, giving you some other interesting stats and data on the impact you have been making. We welcome any feedback you have on these reports. So please send them in so we can improve this reporting to you in future.

Some platform updates.

Another major update is how we utilise the pay by wallet function when purchasing your solar panels. We are very excited to announce that from now on you can pre-fund your Sun Exchange Wallet. That means getting funds into your Sun Exchange wallet before a crowd sale goes live. This is very important because it means you can now overcome any risks of payments not arriving in time to secure your solar cells. These payments can be due to payment processing issues, or delayed payments with bank transfers. Those things have now gone! When a crowdsale goes live, you can now instantly purchase your solar cells in a pay by wallet function. And most importantly to note, you can now only purchase solar cells using this pay by wallet feature. If you have any questions on how this all works, you should check out our FAQ in the blog or simply reach out to us through one of our social media channels.

Finally, I'm very happy to announce and I'm sure you will be relieved to hear that we have now abolished transaction fees when depositing payments into your Sun Exchange Wallet. So whether you're paying by credit card or bank transfer, you will no longer have any fees, which means you can have higher earnings and from now on Sun Exchange will pick up all these transaction costs.

So that's it for the first episode of 2022 whether it is your spring or autumn, thank you all very much for watching and being involved in the Sun Exchange community. We wouldn't be doing this without you. And working together we truly can enable the clean energy transition. We are working tirelessly behind the scenes to bring you a string of diverse and high impact projects for you to get solar powering. So solar power on and I'll see you next time!