Globeleq, a leading independent power company in Africa and its project partners, Source Energia, an African energy developer and Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM), the Mozambican national power utility, have reached financial close on the 15 MWAC Cuamba Solar PV facility with a 7 MWh energy storage system.
The $36 million project would produce electricity through a 25-year power purchase agreement with EDM in the Cuamba district of Niassa province which is approximately 550 km west of the seaside town of Nacala. The project entails an upgrade to the existing Cuamba substation and is the first project in Mozambique to feature a utility-scale energy storage system. The Cuamba Solar plant will provide enough energy for 21,800 households once it is fully operational. Further, it is estimated to eliminate the equivalent of more than 172,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide throughout the project’s lifetime.
The project is expected to become operational in the second half of 2022. The Emerging Africa Infrastructure Fund, a member of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG), provided $19 million in debt financing, with $7 million from the PIDG’s viability gap funding grant facility to enable an affordable tariff, fund necessary grid upgrades, and install an energy storage system for EDM. The battery energy storage system has received a $1 million grant from CDC Plus, the CDC Group’s technical support facility. In October 2021, Globeleq completed the acquisition of the ARC for Renewable Energy S.A.E (ARC) 66 MWp solar PV plant located at the Benban Solar Park near Aswan, Egypt. The SECI Energia, Enerray, and Desert Technologies consortium developed the ARC plant as part of the Egyptian government’s feed-in-tariff programme’s second round.
