The €26.8m (£31.4m) contract involves the construction of eight plants over a period of 10 months.Subsidiary Omexom was awarded the work the Société d’Electricité du Sénégal (Senelec).
The new plants, made up of a total of 62,850 solar panels, will be spread over four large regions: the Saloum Islands and the Thiès region in the western part of the country and the Tambakounda and Kolda regions in the east.
They will enable Senegal to supply power to very isolated sites and to diversify its energy mix. The Thiès plant, which will be directly connected to the grid, will have installed capacity of 15MW. The other seven plants, which have a hybrid (PV-diesel) design, some with battery storage, will have a total combined capacity of 2MW.
The full set of photovoltaic solar plants will generate enough power to cover the annual needs of 140,000 people and will avoid atmospheric CO2 emissions amounting to 18,919 tonnes per year, equivalent to the emissions of a car driven 135 million kilometres. In addition to solar panels, the plants will have generator sets and batteries. The combined power generation and battery storage system is designed to overcome intermittent production and ensure continuous supply.
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