The Democratic Republic of Congo announces the start of a solar project

    The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has announced its plans to build a 600 MW off grid solar kits solar park in the Menkao area of ​​Maluku, 25 kilometers east of the capital Kinshasa. This project will be the first in a series of 1 GW solar power plants in the surrounding area of ​​the city (with a population of 10 million). This city-wide project network is signed by the State Power Company Société nationale d’électricité and the Kinshasa Provincial Government with Sun Plus, a subsidiary of the US real estate investor The Sandi Group, for a period of 25 years. According to the agreement, the State Power Company will purchase the electricity produced by the project at a price of US$0.095 per kilowatt hour.

    The government estimates that the total cost of the 1 GW city solar power network will be around US$1 billion. The total population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is 85 million, of which only about 9% of the population have access to electricity; in rural areas, this proportion has dropped to nearly 1%. The total power generation capacity of the Democratic Republic of Congo is only slightly more than 2.67 GW, of which 2.54 GW is hydropower and 135 MW is thermal power. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimated that as of the end of last year, the Democratic Republic of Congo had a solar power generation capacity of 19 megawatts.