Algeria Doubling Renewable Energy Target, Now 25 GW By 2030
The northern African country of Algeria is doubling its previous 2030 goal for renewable energy, according to recent reports — with the new goal standing at 25 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, rather than 12 GW.
While this change to the country’s goals aren’t official yet, considering that the news was released through the state press agency APS — and the country’s minister of energy and mining (Youcef Yousfi) has stated that an official amendment to the previous (2011) goal would be made in the near future — I’d say there’s a pretty good chance that there’s something to this,
The current level of support for solar energy in Algeria is pretty high — with a feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme that offers rates of roughly 16 DZD/kWh ($0.17 at current exchange rates) for projects between 1–5 megawatts (MW) in size. Projects over 5 MW get variable FiT rates that are based on the predicted energy output of the specific installation in question.
Currently, there are more than 350 MW of solar PV projects being developed in the very sunny African country, with that number expected to continue climbing over the next few years.
The country’s current FiT program was launched just last year, in April, but has been pretty successful so far. It offers a guaranteed flat rate for the first 5 years of a project, with a performance-based rate then being used for the next 15 years.
The country’s current aim is to possess over 800 MW of installed solar energy capacity by 2020. For such a small country (with regard to energy consumption), this represents a significant amount of the power supply mix.
Image Credit: Public Domain
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No mention of CSP. This suggests that Algeria has no interest in the Desertec vision of massive solar-powered exports to Europe, which would need a guarantee of reliabilility. For domestic consumption, it can backup pv solar cheaply with its own gas. However, ACWA are claiming significant cost reductions for CSP, so countries with plenty of sun and deserts like Algeria may look again at the technology.
Or install wind capacity also, and make money exporting the gas to Europe. I’m under the impression that Algeria is also fairly windy. Right now as I’m writing, Algiers’ wind is over 20 MPH.
Very nice. As of 2012 Algeria had 13GW of total capacity installed, so 25GW is quite decent.
The old 2030 goal was 12GW RE, so I don’t think they had 13GW RE already installed in 2012.
Total capacity, not RE capacity.