Sailing on the back of Japan’s recent news of financing the largest PV plant in Africa, the Asian country has now struck a deal with Botswana for the construction of a modern solar power station in Gaborone.
Botswana and Japan signed an Exchange of Notes with the Japanese government providing the country with a grant of ¥1.11 billion for a 1-MW PV power station in Gaborone. The project is scheduled to begin in October and to be completed by March 2011.
As the southern African nation imports 80% of its electricity needs via neighboring countries, Botswana is making attempts to become more energy independent including the November announcement of an agreement with Zimbabwe for an interconnectivity scheme. In December, MTU South Africa was selected to provide maintenance management and spare parts for the 70MW/11kV power plant outside of Francistown – which is operated by Botswana Power Corp. (BPC) (MTU South Africa to Power Botswana).
Last April, BPC announced plans to work on a significant capital expenditure for a phased expansion of its sole power station and the introduction of IPPs (Botswana Heightens Energy Efforts). Frost & Sullivan predicted that the power provider is positioned to grow at 4.8% by 2015 – which after announcements of newly created or proposed projects, doesn’t sound too farfetched.
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