France-based independent power producer (IPP) Qair Energy will deploy 60MWac of solar-plus-storage projects on the island nation of Mauritius after it won a state tender.
The company announced the finalisation of four separate power purchase agreements (PPAs) for the projects’ energy with the Mauritius’ Central Electricity Board (CEB) earlier this month.
Qair will provide the country’s main utility with power and energy from four Solar PV and Battery Storage (BESS) Hybrid Facilities in Balaclava, Petite Riviere and Trou d’Eau Douce (two projects). The projects total 60MWac of solar PV capacity and an unspecified amount of attached battery energy storage.
A spokesperson for Qair told Energy-Storage.news that it could only reveal more details about the storage portion once the final design was set, but said it would primarily be load shifting solar and providing grid ancillary services. They added it would be deployed using grid forming inverters connected to lithium-ion batteries.
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Mauritius, which lies some 1,000km east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is aiming for a 60% renewable electricity generation mix by 2030, which is today dominated by oil and coal. The CEB issued request for proposals (RFPs) for the purchase of electricity from solar-plus-storage facilities totalling 90-110MW of power in March last year, reported by Energy-Storage.news at the time.
Qair’s awarded projects equate to around 7% of the country’s current installed power capacity of 876MW, a figure from the CEB’s website.
Qair is an IPP that develops and operators renewable energy, green hydrogen production and energy storage projects, with its main office in Paris and smaller ones across the French-speaking world. It has 1GW of capacity in operation or under construction and a total pipeline of 30GW across 20 countries in Latin America and EMEA.
It has 35MW of operational capacity spread across one wind and two solar plants in Mauritius already and is looking to deploy some 500MW of solar PV in Italy, as reported by Energy-Storage.news’ sister site PV Tech.
