Spread across the island, the Bureau de l'Education Catholique's (BEC) mission is to offer quality education to all students by helping them develop advanced educational, cultural and social skills. To support this teaching methodology, the Bureau has put in place in 2011 its own ecological footprint program involving students. This step marked the beginning of a new and greener path at BEC.

In June 2012, SETL, a subsidiary of the LEAL Group in Mauritius and joint venture partner of The meeco Group, won the 750 kWp Public Tender aiming at installing solar power rooftop installations on each of the 67 BEC schools in Mauritius.

"Bringing solar power to the BEC schools is a golden social opportunity and a project with substantial positive side effects and consequences since it serves as a tool to raise awareness around environmental issues and energy consumption in young and adult populations at the school," whilst at the same time providing at the same schools green energy," declares Dieter Trutschler, Sales Director at The meeco Group.

At this point, the first 12 schools have been finalized and are fully operational.

"All of the solar energy systems installed are connected to the grid, offering schools a green power supply," explains Enrique Tebar, BEC Project Manager for The meeco Group on Mauritius. "This project is especially important to us, as it contributes to bringing solar energy into Mauritians' everyday life, as an efficient and competitive alternative energy to serve for small to mid size consumers."

For this project, The meeco Group and SETL following their agreed strategy to provide only long lifetime solutions, have again selected top tier material such as 150 Wp thin-film CIS Solar Frontier modules in combination with SMA Sunny 7000 HV inverters and non-penetrating supporting structures by Krannich Solar.

"The meeco Group has chosen to partner and enter into a long-term joint venture with SETL, a well-established actor in the island's energy sector, to install renewable energy where it is really needed," declares Mr. Tebar.

"In a territory like Mauritius, distributed energy generation is the only real option to meet current and most importantly future energy needs. The meeco Group procures the components and provides layout and technical advisory services, while SETL assumes the management of local project acquisition and preparation, installation and will ensure future maintenance," adds Mr. Tebar.