West Africa Slated For 2 GW “Clean Energy Corridor”
Originally published on Cleantechies.
New plans from the ECOWAS Regional Center for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE) will see a “clean energy corridor” featuring a combined capacity of 2 gigawatts (GW) developed in West Africa.
In an interview at the Solar and Off-grid Renewables West Africa event in Accra, Ghana, with PV Tech, the executive director of ECREEE, Mahamma Kappiah, commented that the corridor will feature numerous 10 to 15 megawatt (MW) solar PV plants, accompanied by wind energy and hydroelectric projects as well.
He continued: “In the 2 GW, we have different contributions from each country. Nigeria wants to take 1 GW of it, the rest is shared among other countries, some with 200 MW and some 500 MW. We are going to auction all the projects under a common system.”
The plans are expected to cleared by the end of 2016.
Kappiah continued: “By the end of this year, we will have gotten a clear picture of whose projects we are talking about, in which areas, how much each one of them (costs) and how they are linking with the transmission infrastructure.”
The plan is to tender all of the associated project capacity at once — primarily as a means of simplifying the process for the governments involved, thereby cutting costs.
Image by SEWA (some rights reserved)
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I’m sure they need the 2 GW, but why the corridor? Part of the point of solar is that you can put it anywhere, at any size. Many politicians don’t get this, and think that a big programme must mean Big Projects. See the Indian government’s Ultra-Mega solar plant programme, including Ladakh, just about the worst possible region in the whole subcontinent for large-scale infrastructure..
I’m sure the corridor label is more political than technical. It is about getting regional cooperation.
In Africa obtaining regional cooperation is the perennial broken promise, however. Progress on the corridor will be slow to be point of glacial. Unfortunate, but realistic.
Regional cooperation in Africa is a perennial issue, from what I’ve read. From that perspective, this may be a good example for the future. It sounds as if dispersal will be a feature, when they talk about “numerous 10 to 15 megawatt (MW) solar PV plants” and say that they don’t yet know which projects will happen or where they will go.
ECOWAS, by the way, is intended to partially address that by facilitating trade within the West African region. Info:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Community_of_West_African_States
Sez here that if ECOWAS were a nation, it’d be the 4th largest in the world by population (though comparing the nation list by population, as I stated it, it looks as if only India and China should be larger) and the 7th largest in area (smaller than Australia but bigger than India.)
Oh well, it’s a big area however you slice it.