Qair Secures Funding for Hybrid Solar Storage Portfolio Transforming Mauritius

• French IPP Qair lines up loans to build 60 MW of solar-plus-battery plants, helping Mauritius curb diesel imports.

Independent power producer Qair has clinched long-term financing to deliver a trio of hybrid solar-and-storage parks totalling sixty megawatts across Mauritius, a sun-kissed nation that still relies on oil-fired generators for two thirds of its electricity.

Arranged by Standard Bank and Mauritius Commercial Bank, the deal packages concessional loans and export-credit guarantees to cover construction, batteries, and grid-integration upgrades. It also includes a local-currency tranche that shields project revenues from forex swings—a first for a Mauritian renewables venture of this size.

Each site—located in Albion, Flacq, and Savanne—will pair ground-mounted photovoltaics with lithium-iron-phosphate battery systems sized at one hour of storage. The batteries will discharge after sunset, shaving the utility’s costly evening peak and reducing the need to fire up aging diesel units at Fort Victoria power station.

Energy Minister Georges Pierre Lesjongard hailed the agreement as “a milestone that moves Mauritius closer to our forty percent renewables target by 2030 and cuts greenhouse-gas emissions from tourism and manufacturing.” The Climate Investment Funds’ Clean Technology Fund provided part of the capital at below-market rates, recognising the islands’ vulnerability to fuel-price shocks and cyclones.

Qair entered the Mauritian market in 2015 with a ten-megawatt wind farm; the new projects cement its role as the archipelago’s largest private green-power player. CEO Louis Blanchot said hybridisation was crucial: “Sunshine alone is abundant but intermittent. Batteries ensure every kilowatt-hour generated during the day replaces imported fuel at night.”

Construction is slated to start in December, employing around three hundred Mauritians at peak. All three plants are expected online before the 2027 high-season, when air-conditioning demand surges. Over their twenty-year power-purchase agreements, the parks should displace more than one-point-five million barrels of fuel oil and save the Central Electricity Board an estimated MUR 4 billion in variable costs.

Success could inspire similar hybrids across the Indian Ocean, where island grids share the same twin challenges of high tariffs and limited fossil-fuel storage.