First-of-its-kind BESS in sub-Saharan Africa commissioned in Malawi

• A solar and also storage project totalling 20MW has entered commercial operation in Malawi, which the firms included state is the first grid-connected utility-scale co-located project to do so in sub-Saharan Africa.

Independent power producer (IPP) JCM Power as well as framework investor InfraCo Africa have actually announced that the 20MW Golomoti Solar PV as well as Battery Energy Storage project in the Dedza area of the country is now on-line.

The business claimed the first-of-its-kind project, which took a little under twelve month to build, marks a milestone for the region.

The project pairs a 28.5 MWp solar farm with a 50MW/10MWh lithium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS). The BESS was provided by Sungrow as covered by Energy-Storage. information' sister site PV Tech in May 2021 when the project was announced.

The BESS part of the project received financial support from the Energy Catalyst programme of Innovate UK, the UK's technology company. It will certainly smooth out intermittency of the solar farm in addition to provide frequency feedback solutions to the country's power grid.

The solar's efficient power seems lower than its nameplate, with journalism release mentioning the project will certainly "give 20MW of much required power to Malawi's grid".

It is JCM Power's 2nd renewable resource project in Malawi. In October 2021, its 60MW Salima Solar project got in commercial operation.

Talking about the Golomoti commissioning, CEO Christian Wray claimed: "In addition to establishing and financing the project, JCM Power handled the implementation of the works as well as, in spite of various obstacles because of influences from the global COVID-19 pandemic, we are pleased with the speed of project implementation, the favorable financial benefits supplied to Malawi and all while maintaining our workers and also communities safe."

Some 85% of the 550 jobs created with construction mosted likely to Malawians and the process managed ancient baobab trees which got on the site.

JCM Power has business backing from numerous development financial institutions and has actually completed renewable resource projects in Malawi, Pakistan, Nigeria and also Tanzania. InfraCo Africa becomes part of the Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG), an infrastructure project programmer and also capitalist specialised in sub-Saharan Africa as well as southern and also southeast Asia.