Blue Energy to build Africa’s largest solar PV power plant

• 11 years ago (2012-12-04)
• David Flin

Africa 320 Europe 1088 Renewables 776

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UK-based Blue Energy has announced that it will build Africa’s largest solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant, the 155 MW Nzema project in Ghana. The project will increase Ghana’s current generating capacity by 6 per cent, and will meet 20 per cent of the government’s target of generating 10 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020. The $400 million scheme is due to be fully operational by 2015.

The Nzema project will be the first to go ahead under Ghana’s 2011 Renewable Energy Act, which created a system of feed-in tariffs, and it is a success for the government’s policy of attracting international finance.

Blue Energy has secured all the consents it needs to go ahead with the project. Ghana’s electricity regulators, the Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission, have awarded it a generation licence and a feed-in tariff for the plant’s 20-year operational life. Blue Energy will now conclude discussions with a number of international financial institutions and global equity and infrastructure funds which have expressed interest in providing debt financing or investing in the project. It expects to reach financial closure in the first half of 2013.

The Nzema plant will be directly connected to the 161 kV West African Power Pool transmission line, linking Ghana to Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. Installation of more than 630,000 solar PV modules will begin by the end of 2013, and electricity generation will start early in 2014, with sections coming on stream as they are completed. The project is due to reach full capacity by October 2015.