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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