Location of Ayitepa Wind Farm in Nigeria
Acquisitions and buyouts of projects in the renewable energy domain aren’t that common, especially when you talk about Africa. Africa has only just started attracting noticeable investment in renewable energy, and the recent announcement of Ghana’s largest and the first utility-scale wind energy project provides an extremely positive outlook for the continent’s endeavour to expand renewable energy infrastructure.
Mainstream Renewable Power has signed an agreement with Switzerland-based wind energy project developer NEK Umwelttechnik to acquire a 225 MW wind energy project in Ghana. The project is still under development, with financial closure expected next year. The project would form 10% of Ghana’s installed power generation capacity.
The project, expected to be commissioned in 2016, will be located at the east coast of Ghana., and cost an estimated $525 million. Ghana currently has an installed capacity of 2,000 MW, so the wind energy project acquires significant importance to the country’s power sector. Mainstream and NEK Umwelttechnik will co-develop the project until financial closure is achieved, after which Mainstream will take over the operations for the lifetime of the project.
Mainstream Renewable Power has been aggressively investing in developing renewable energy projects in Africa. The company developed and commissioned the continent’s largest operational wind energy project in South Africa. A total of three wind and solar power projects have been developed by the company in South Africa, while three wind energy projects are currently under development.
Several African countries are seeing significant investment coming into their renewable energy sectors. A number of these countries have relatively small installed capacity and, thus, every small renewable energy projects tend to result in a noticeable boost to their energy mix. Recently, Norwegian company Scatec Solar announced that it would soon commission Rwanda’s first utility-scale solar power project. Even with a small generation capacity of 8.5%, the project would increase Rwanda’s generation capacity by 7%.
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