UGANDA’S TOWN OF SOROTI CHOSEN FOR 10 MW SOLAR PLANT
MORE SOLAR POWER COULD HELP SAVE UGANDA’S ENDANGERED WHITE WATER RAFTING INDUSTRY
(Posted 05th March 2016)
Access Uganda Solar Limited is the company which will on 17th of March begin construction of a 10 MW solar powered electricity plant outside the town of Soroti, a place hitherto better known for Uganda’s aviation academy which is located there. The company is a partnership between Dubai based Access Power and EREN Renewable Energy.
The cost of the installation, which will connect to the national electricity grid, was given as 19 million US Dollars and this solar power plant will be the first of its kind in Uganda and, when complete, the largest in Eastern Africa.
The promoters and the Uganda Electricity Transmission Company signed a guaranteed 20 year power purchase agreement late last year which was the last stage ahead of launching the assembly of the new plant.
Completion is said to be achieved by mid of this year, with the option of expanding electricity generation by another 20 MW to an overall total of 30 MW. This will be a major boost for Uganda’s energy hungry manufacturing and domestic sectors especially in this part of the country where electricity supply has been far from reliable.
After completion of the initial phase will some 40.000 households and businesses in the wider Soroti area benefit from this boost to electricity supply, literally produced at their doorstep.
This is the first power plant entirely based on renewable solar energy and goes to demonstrate that Uganda has a huge untapped potential to exploit such clean energy sources.
Besides solar capacity are wind power and even thermal power plants an excellent investment opportunity. Several sites across the country have been identified as highly suitable for tapping into thermal energy and wind power and thereby also improving Uganda’s green footprint.
The increased use of such options could in fact save Uganda mega bucks otherwise spent in the building of hugely expensive and environmentally questionable hydro dams like Isimba.
This dam on the Nile threatens to wipe out the entire white water rafting industry on the upper Nile, something the country will come to regret, but probably only long after the fact when the situation has become irreversible. Only when tourist dollars will be spent in other countries like Zambia, Zimbabwe or Ethiopia, where white water rafting is seen as a national asset unlike in Uganda, will the rude awaking set in.
Presently all efforts of the rafting and tourism industry to reduce or limit the size of the dam have fallen on deaf ears and if the Isimba project is completed without a change in design height, five star rafting in Uganda will be a thing of the past.
