Botswana

Diamond Trading Company Botswana is seeking proposals for a 600 kW ground-mounted PV plant to power operations at its mining site in Gaborone.

Trade bodies the Africa Solar Industry Association and the African Hydrogen Partnership hosted a two-day virtual conference to discuss the role green hydrogen can play in economic growth across the continent–and how it could drive desalination in freshwater-starved coastal countries.

Abe Cambridge, chief executive and founder of solar cell-level, crowdfunding-based PV leasing business The Sun Exchange has spoken to pv magazine about the company’s project pipeline and its focus on bringing affordable clean power to schools.

An overview of the state of solar across the continent by trade body the Africa Solar Industry Association has highlighted a patchy policy landscape where clean power ambitions are often not followed through.

Canada-based Giyani Metals is planning to build a solar plant for its manganese mining site in Botswana. Three kinds of projects, with capacities ranging from 14 to 60 MW, are being considered. The power generated by the facility may be either consumed entirely by the mine or also sold to the grid under different scenarios.

The new scheme, called Rooftop Solar Programme, is expected to allocate 10 MW of PV capacity over the next 12 months.

Plus, some 5 GW of solar could be heading to Botswana and Namibia and news of a new automotive fuel cell building in Ulm, Germany.

The governments of the two African nations are considering deploying huge volumes of generation capacity over two decades. The project, still in its initial phase, is being supported by the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Energy.

Botswana Power Corp is seeking independent power producers to build two 50 MW solar parks. The projects are intended to reduce the nation’s dependence on power imports from troubled South African utility Eskom.

The canceled tender was seeking investors for the construction of two 50 MW PV plants, as part of a joint venture with local utility BPC. The new tender will focus on independent power producers.