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| File: Lintao Zhang/Pool via Reuters] |
China Energy Engineering Corp. (China Energy) (601868. SS) has proposed building a 1,000-megawatt floating solar power plant at Kariba Dam in Zimbabwe at about $1 billion, according to documents released Monday.
The southern African country currently generates less than half of its 1,700-MW electricity needs due to the underperformance of the old coal-fired plants and low water levels that affect the output of the 1,050-MW Kariba hydroelectric project.
As developers seek to avoid taking up large land areas and competing land-use interests, floating solar power plants are becoming more attractive.
According to documents obtained by Reuters, under China Energy's proposal to the state-owned Zimbabwe Electricity Company and a private consortium of the country's industrial power customers, about 1.8 million solar panels would be installed at $987 million.
Zimbabwe began generating electricity last week from the first of two new 300-MW coal-fired power plants in Hwange financed by China but wants to switch to renewable energy sources for long-term power supply.
Last December, the government unveiled incentives to bring 1,100 MW of solar projects online by 2025.
According to Reuters, Zimbabwe's goal of generating 1,100 MW of renewable energy by 2025 has been hampered by a lack of investment from independent power suppliers, who have been deterred by currency instability and uneconomic prices in the country.
The Zimbabwe dollar had depreciated rapidly, falling from about 2.5 to the U.S. dollar when it was reintroduced in February 2019 to 673.42 today after a decade of dollarization. Electricity tariffs in Zimbabwe have also failed to keep pace with inflation, which reached 255% in November.
SOURCE: Reuters
