French independent power producer and solar project developer Neoen has secured financing for its 140 MW (DC) PV project, Capella Solar, in El Salvador.
The US$143 million senior debt is being provided by the Dutch Development Bank (FMO), the French Development Agency (Proparco) and the Inter-American Development Bank. This sum, said the FMO in a press release, includes the costs of installing a 3 MW/1.5 MWh LG Chem lithium-ion battery system, which will be supplied by Italian manufacturer Nidec.
The project, which will comprise two systems of the same size, will be constructed by Spain-based engineering company TSK and French contractor Gensun.
“Capella Solar was awarded a 20-year power purchase agreement denominated in US Dollars with local distributors Delsur, AES, EDESAL and B&D at a price below grid parity of US$49.6/MWh,” the FMO said.
Popular content
The project was selected by El Salvador’s National Energy Council (CNE) in the second renewable energy auction, held in January 2017. In addition to these two projects, which were awarded a tariff of $49.55 and $49.56/MWh, respectively, CNE selected a 10 MW plant proposed by Sonsonate Energía at a price of $67.24/MWh, and a fourth 9.9 MW project submitted by Asocio Ecosolar at a price of $54.98/MWh.
The Capela Solar plant will be the second large-scale PV facility built by Neoen in El Salvador. The first, the 101 MW (DC) Providencia solar park, was commissioned in May 2017. The project, which is selling power to the national grid at a price of $0.1019/kWh, was selected by CNE in the country’s first auction for solar and wind, held in 2014.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.