Episode 46 of Sun Exchange Video Diaries has landed! These video blogs get you behind the scenes at Sun Exchange, giving you the latest on solar cell installations, community energy production, industry news and much more!

In this episode:

• New Crowdsales
• Installation updates
• Solarversary announcements
• Platform upgrades

Make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel so you're first to know about all things Sun Exchange.

I was watching on the horizon this morning waiting for the sunrise and then it dawned on me…

Hello Sun Exchangers! Welcome to Episode 46 of Sun Exchange diaries, whether you're an existing Sun exchange solar cell owner already monetizing sunshine or whether you're new to the community, and just want to learn about how this all works - This is the place to be to find out all the news and goings on behind the scenes. Before we begin, make sure you do like and subscribe to this channel so you're first know when these videos get released.

Three solar crowd sales were completed this month, a solar crowd sale for Rondebosch Boys High School, Westville girls high school and Bothaville High School, those crowds are all sold out in record time and have over 250 kilowatts of solar cells purchased. Those projects were snapped up in seconds by Sun exchange members. So if you did miss out, do not worry, because we've got our latest Spar supermarket crowd sale opening very soon. So do make sure you're standing by your dashboards to get those solar cells these projects do sell out very fast.

We will also be announcing very soon our first project outside of South Africa. This is not only our biggest solar project to date, but the social and environmental impact of this project are simply enormous. That's all I can say about it just for now, so make sure you stay tuned.

Fantastic news. The solar power plant to power Woodside special care center is now complete and generating power. Thank you all so much for your patience with this project. Of course the residents are very sensitive to the threat of the coronavirus. These same residents can now enjoy 20 years of lower cost solar power. Thanks to you. So thank you on their behalf.

Over a Boland wine cellar progress is really accelerating, the solar panels are now going down. And you may even be generating electricity by the end of this month. Also some good news: the installation at Cape Town High School has also just kicked off all the equipment is on site and the cables are already being laid. Any solar cell owners on that project should be generating power by the end of this month. And thank you all again for your patience on that project as the COVID related lockdowns really prevented access for powering the schools. So thank you all very much for your patience as we get this project completed.

The Sun Exchange community has collectively now produced 2.5 gigawatt hours of clean, affordable solar electricity. That's enough electricity to light an LED light bulb for 294 million hours. And the best thing about this is we're only just getting started this month and saw the first anniversary of the Welverdiend retirement home solar power plant. So any of you who are producing power for that project, congratulations it has been a year since you started to do so you've now collectively produced over 153 megawatt hours of affordable electricity for this wonderful retirement home. That's over 3% more than was forecast. And the best news about this is the cost savings to that retirement home now exceed 60,000 Rand around 4000 US dollars. That's a cost saving, which is literally reducing the cost of care for the elderly. So congratulations to all of you for powering this project. Any of you solar powering westville veteran hospital, your solar cells have now been operating for three months, we've just made a blog post on this, we've interviewed and heard back from Westfall Veteran hospital about their experience of going solar and what it means to them. So if you are solar powering this project, or just want to see what the impacts of our projects are three months in, do check that out.

Big update this month with your Sun exchange dashboard. Of course, Sun exchange is all about people, planet, and profit. And the data on your carbon reductions are now visible on your dashboard and are listed at the top of the summary of your solar power plants. If you want to see how much CO2 you have offset, that's the place to see it. If you navigate down to the solar cell section of your dashboard, you will now see a status field. This is a text based updates section where we can now give you more regular updates, specifically around installations so we can keep you up to date with what's going on more frequently.

We've had a couple of questions come through around why the numbers don't seem to be updating on some of the projects or listed as 0.0 kilowatt hours. The simple answer to that is the numbers are updated once per month. So you don't even worry if you're not seeing the numbers move. They are updated at the beginning of each month. We are aware that this could be better and we're and we're working very hard on getting these numbers updated more frequently, even daily very soon. So thanks for all your feedback. If you've got any other questions or suggestions on how to improve your Sun Exchange dashboard, please let us know.

Here at Sun exchange, we are all about decentralization whether it's decentralized in the energy system, the monetary system or even ways of working. We thought it was about time to celebrate something changes here at the surface corner in Muizenberg and we bought the whole team from around South Africa all together for some fun and games. If you want to join this vibrant, passionate community making the world turn solar, do check out the careers page on the bottom of our website, and we'd love to hear from you.

Did you know that the Sun produces 384 trillion terawatt hours of energy each year. And to put that into context, the whole energy consumption of the planet is just 20,000 terawatt hours of electricity each year. So we've got some way to go. But we'll begin to harness the power output of our star. That's what Sun Exchange is all about.

That's it for this episode. Please make sure you like and subscribe to this channel, click that notification bell. So you first know when these videos get released, and please make sure to like and follow all our social media channels. We're on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, whatever your favorite channel of social media, we're on that so give us a follow up. See you next time.