Africa-Press – Eswatini. In a bid to save funds spent on importing electricity and improve local security of supply, the Eswatini Electricity Company (EEC) has committed over E250m to develop a 10 MW Solar Photo Voltaic (PV) Plant at Qomintaba in Lavumisa. This is still part of the company’s efforts to respond to Eswatini’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) initiative which aims to increase renewable energy generation in the national energy mix to 50 per cent by the year 2030.
According to a statement from the company endorsed by the marketing and corporate communications team, one of the project’s objectives is to increase sovereignty security of supply to reduce reliance on electricity imports to meet the country’s energy needs.
According to the statement, this would be the very first to be owned and operated by EEC and would also be the first utility scale solar PV plant in the country.
A utility-scale solar plant is one which produces 10 megawatts (MW) or more of energy. This project is said to be part of the country’s strategy to increase internal generation mix while improving sustainability.
Integration
It is further stated that the integration of this plant to the grid was done at Maloma Substation.
This project also includes improvements of the configuration at Maloma Substation which has a busbar, the modification of the Sithobela line bay and the addition of the Lavumisa to Maloma line bay.
The statement stated that the plant was completed and commissioned in December 2020 and later it underwent tests which included grid code compliance tests and performance tests. The solar PV plant complied with all contractual obligations at the issuing of COD.
After a competitive bidding process, Consolidated Power Projects Energy Solutions was awarded the contract based on technical and financial evaluation that yielded the lowest tariff.
The statement also revealed that they could be aesthetic issues associated with the completion of the plant which needed to be corrected but would not prevent the safe operation of the plant.
Mavuso also added that from the commissioning of the plant to date, a total of 25GWh had been exported to the grid, saving the country the cost of energy imports and improving local security of supply.
They said the excess power that would be generated would be used to power the first of its kind utility scale 1MWh batter energy storage system which is currently at the advanced stage of integration into the solar PV plant.
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