The $880-million Xina concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in Pofadder, South Africa completed its first month of commercial operations. Mott MacDonald was lenders’ technical advisor during the project’s financing and construction stages and will now monitor operations in an ongoing role.
The Xina CSP plant was awarded during the third round of South Africa’s REIPPP, the 100-MW plant is expected to generate approximately 400GWh of energy per year. This will be sufficient to provide electricity to 95,000 homes, while the use of CSP will prevent the emission of 348,000 tons of CO2 annually.
As well as using parabolic trough technology with 5.5 hours of thermal energy storage, Xina also features the largest parabolic trough collector used in a commercial CSP project to date.
As lender’s technical advisor, Mott MacDonald provided technical, environmental and social due diligence prior to financial close. The consultancy then provided construction monitoring services, helping the project attain practical completion to commence operations.