EM-ONE Wins Reuters Global Energy Transition Award for Sierra Leone Solar Microgrid Hospital Electrification Programme
Connaught Government Hospital, Sierra Leone. 760 kWp PV and 1225 kWh ESS
Our solar microgrid healthcare project in Sierra Leone has won the Reuters Global Energy Transition Award for Socially Responsible Energy Project of the Year, bringing reliable renewable power to 8.7 million people in a country where fewer than 3 in 10 have electricity access.
In Sierra Leone, fewer than 30% of the population has reliable access to electricity. For the 43 healthcare facilities that had been operating without it, vaccine cold chains couldn’t be maintained, clinics where surgical procedures were limited to daylight hours, and health centres unable to run the diagnostic equipment they had. That wasn’t just an infrastructure gap. It was a barrier to survival.
EM-ONE has spent the last three years closing it with modular solar microgrids purpose-built for healthcare delivery.
The award was announced in New York at the Reuters Energy Industry Awards gala on June 22, where our Sierra Leone Solar Microgrid Hospital Electrification Programme was named the recipient of the Reuters Global Energy Transition Award for Socially Responsible Energy Project of the Year.
The solar microgrid engineering behind the outcome
Delivered in partnership with Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL) and funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), EM-ONE designed, built, and operated the solar microgrids delivered at the 43 health facilities across Sierra Leone: 18 hospitals and 25 community health centres, reaching an estimated 8.7 million people across the country.
The numbers behind the headline:
4 MWp of solar PV capacity installed
7.3 MWh of battery storage deployed
43 health facilities electrified across three delivery phases
8.7 million people served through improved healthcare access
Every system was designed for one of Africa’s most logistically demanding operating environments: a standardized and modular architecture enabled the plug-and-play microgrids to be built quickly and to run reliably for decades.
Delivering renewable energy healthcare access through partnership
2026 Reuters Energy Industry Award
Projects at this scale don’t happen on engineering alone. SEforALL identified the need and structured the programme; FCDO funded it; Crown Agents and Tetra Tech managed delivery across its phases; and Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health and Sanitation supported the programme’s delivery on the ground, facility by facility.
That combination: a funder willing to back long-duration infrastructure, a technical partner who understood the sector, and an engineering team accountable for outcomes rather than just installation, is what let this move from a single hospital pilot into a 43-site national programme in under three years.
Built to outlast the programme: local capacity for off-grid hospital electrification
Infrastructure was only half the brief. EM-ONE partnered with SEforALL to embed a Women in STEM traineeship into the project, training 24 female graduates in solar PV systems design, installation, and operations, several of whom thereafter joined EM-ONE full-time to help operate the very systems they helped build.
Facility staff and biomedical technicians across all 43 sites were also trained on system operation and maintenance, as well as on energy storage operations so the communities served have the capability to keep these systems running well beyond project handover.
That’s the standard we hold every project to, whether it’s a hospital microgrid or a utility-scale interconnection: engineer it right, build it to last, and make sure the people on the ground can run it without us.
Pujehun Government Hospital, Sierra Leone. 165 kWp PV and 634 kWh ESS.
This recognition marks a milestone in a sector we’re not finished with.
EM-ONE has now designed and built over 150 solar microgrids across Nigeria and Sierra Leone, with more than 14 MWp of installed capacity powering hospitals and clinics across both countries, one of the largest solar power deployments for healthcare facilities on the continent and we’re continuing to expand that footprint across Africa.
We’re grateful to SEforALL, FCDO, Crown Agents, Tetra Tech, and Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Health and Sanitation for building this with us, as well as to the engineers, technicians, and trainees who delivered it on the ground.
EM-ONE Energy is a Canadian engineering and project development firm focused on the full lifecycle development, construction and operation of sustainable energy and smart electricity infrastructure across Africa.
