Juwi Renewable Energies has started construction of a 558-kilowatt photovoltaic power plant in South Africa. The German renewable energy company is handling engineering, procurement and construction of the plant located on the Pretoria campus of Council for Scientific and Industrial Research.
According to Juwi, the company has been able achieve levelized cost of electricity of ZAR0.83 ($0.06) per kilowatt hour using CSIR’s model. For the first three years of operation, the 1-hectare solar tracking photovoltaic installation will generate 3.5 million kilowatt hours of electricity.
Juwi’s power plant will begin power generation from the end of August. The company will also provide operations and maintenance services on the facility for three years from the time it becomes fully operational.
Earlier this month, Juwi also started construction of an off-grid, solar-diesel hybrid power plant at the DeGrussa Copper-Gold Mine NL in Western Australia.
The facility will include an integrated 10.6MW solar park and a 6MW battery facility, Juwi has stated.
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The solar part of the facility is made up of 30,000 solar modules and will cover more than 20 hectares.
Juwi is financing the $40 million project and will own and operate the facility once it becomes operational in early 2016. The company plans to test the potential of the project for application in Africa.
In Africa and Australia sunshine is adequate to help meet 40 percent of the daytime power demand and it can be produced at costs lesser conventional sources of generation.
“Solar-diesel hybrid systems deliver the lowest overall cost of power while guaranteeing power availability around the clock. At the same time it saves fuel costs by 35-40 percent,” Greg Austin, managing director of juwi South Africa, said.
According to Austin, fewer than 100 solar-diesel hybrid projects are currently operational around the world. And in the mining sector, there are fewer than 10 operational projects.
In Namibia, Juwi installed a 200 kilowatt peak hybrid project and supplies public buildings and about 100 private households with clean solar power.
“Low cost renewable energy is competitive with traditional fossil fuels in many off-grid and mining applications globally and solar-diesel hybrids can cut fuel bills by more than a third. That’s a massive saving and a competitive advantage,” Austin said.
Ajith Kumar S