The government of Rwanda is preparing to commission in early August 2014 the first utility-scale solar photovoltaic power plant in East Africa with a production capacity of 8.5 MW. The project has commenced testing phase of up to 20 percent of its total capacity.
At present, less than one in five households in Rwanda have access to electricity, and this will increase the country’s production capacity by up to 8 percent.
The Norwegian company Scatec Solar is the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) company responsible for building the power plant, and Remote Partners is the local management and support firm. The project has been funded by Norfund (Norwegian Investment Fund for Developing Countries) and KLP.
The Dutch company Gigawatt Global is the developer of the project. Once the plant is on line, Scatec Solar will operate and maintain the plant which will feed electricity directly into the national grid. The price is lower than for electricity generated by diesel oil.
