Blue Energy Seeking Investors To Build Africa’s Largest Solar Power Plant With 155 MW Capacity

Taking advantage of a new regulatory environment in Ghana that’s more favorable to investments in renewable energy, Blue Energy, a UK-based renewable energy investment and development company has a unveil plans to build the country’s and the continent’s largest solar photovoltaic power plant.

Westmill photovoltaic solar farm constructed by Blue Energy in Wiltshire, UK. Photo courtesy of Blue Energy.

The 155 megawatt power plant will be built by the company’s subsidiary Mere Power Nzema Ltd. on a 183 hectare site close to the village of Aiwaiso in western Ghana. The company has secured a 100-year lease on the site, with planning permission as well as permission to connect to the grid.

Extoling on benefits of the location, Blue Energy said the site has “good solar radiation, has excellent access to the major road systems and is within easy reach of a deep water port at Takoradi.

“The plant will be directly connected to the 161 kV West African Power Pool transmission line, which runs alongside the site, linking Ghana to [the] Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria, and has available capacity for its load.”

Blue Energy expects to begin installing about 630,000 solar photovoltaic modules by the end of the year, and for electric generation to start early in 2014, with sections coming “on stream” as they are completed. The $400 million project is due to reach full capacity by October 2015.

Industry analyst Ash Sharma at IMS Research told the BBC News that this “is the biggest single project that’s going ahead at this moment. It is not the biggest in the world, but if it goes ahead it will be the biggest in Africa.

“The project has land, it has planning consent, it has a generating license, and it has received a feed-in tariff. It is the right plant in the right place at the right time.”

Blue Energy says that it has “secured all the consents that it needs to go ahead with the project,” and that, “Ghana’s electricity regulator, the Energy Commission and the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission have awarded it a generation license and a feed-in tariff for the plant’s 20-year operational life.”

 The only thing that still hasn’t been secured is investors. The company says that it’s in “discussions with a number of international financial institutions, and global equity and infrastructure funds which have expressed interest in providing debt financing or investing in the project.” Blue Energy expects to “reach financial close in the first half of 2013.”

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The Hanwha Group Now World’s Third Largest Solar Manufacturer With Q.CELLS Acquisition

The Hanwha Group has just become the third largest solar manufacturer in the world with its newly completed acquisition of Q.CELLS and the now launch of Hanwha Q.CELLS.

Q.CELLS solar power plant in Zerbst, Germany. Photo courtesy of Q.CELLS.

The South Korean conglomerate acquired the bankrupt German photovoltaic developer and manufacturer last August.

The Hanwah Group justified the purchase decision, saying that the bankruptcy filed by Q.CELLS last April was due to a downturn in the global solar industry, the European sovereign debt crisis, and a reduction in German solar subsidy, and promoting that, “Even so, Q.CELLS has remained as a leading global solar player with revenues of EUR 1,354 million and EUR 1,023 million, in 2010 and 2011 respectively.”

Hanwha acquired the following assets from Q.CELLS:

• The headquarters in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Germany, as well as the research and development operations in Germany.
• The 200 MW cell and 120 MW module manufacturing facilities in Germany.
• The 800 MW cell manufacturing facility in Malaysia.
• Sales offices in the United States, Australia, and Japan.
• 34 patents.

Hanwha says that the total acquisition value is EUR 40 million (around KRW 55.5 billion), and that it has also “effectively negotiated to buy the existing loan agreement (MYR 850 million/around KRW 300 billion) signed between Q.CELLS Malaysia and the Malaysian government.”

The conglomerate added that, “With a strong support shown by the Malaysian government, the loan has been structured in such ways that Hanwha can use the profits generated from Malaysia operations to pay [it] back in the long-term.”

Hanwha touts that with Q.CELLS’ capacity of 1GW added to Hanwha Solar’s existing cell production capacity of 1.3 GW, Hanwha will reach the total annual production capacity of 2.3GW and “become the third largest solar cell manufacturer in the world.”

Hanwha’s 2.3 GW of manufacturing capacity will be distributed across Germany, Malaysia, and China, which the conglomerate sees as a competitive advantage in being able to “supply any region in the world [with solar power], free of trade sanctions.”

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Polluters Agree to $56 Million in Cleanup Costs of Waste Disposal Site Near Galveston Bay, Texas

Over a dozen companies and several government agencies – who all used the Malone Services Superfund Site in Texas City, a former waste disposal site near Galveston Bay – have now reached a settlement agreement with the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to pay a combined total of $56.4 million in cleanup costs.

Image courtesy of ens-newswire.com.

Malone Services disposed of waste oil and waste chemicals between about 1964 and 1996. Since the beginning, companies and government agencies have sent about 481 million gallons of waste to the site.

The waste site contains contaminated oily sludge in above-ground storage tanks and a multi-acre earthen impoundment.

The agreement will require a group of 27 companies – including Exxon Mobile, BP, and Marathon Oil – to clean up the site, pay the EPA fines toward past and future costs, and reimburse the state of Texas for past costs.

In addition, the U.S. federal government and the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), along with numerous other government agencies, will resolve their liability by “paying cash to the 27 companies,” said the Justice Department.

The United States, which shipped 1.62 percent of waste, will pay about $1.5 million. TCEQ, which shipped 0.00545 percent of the waste, will contribute $6,700, added the Justice Department.

The EPA has already completed four rounds of administrative settlements with about 320 relatively small contributors of waste, collecting about $8.4 million. The EPA says that it will give at least $4.5 million of these funds and other recovery funds to the group of 27 companies carrying out the cleanup.

The cleanup agreement requires the oily sludge to be solidified and placed into an on-site storage cell, along with any contaminated soil, says the Justice Department, adding that groundwater will be monitored to confirm that the remedial action is preventing offsite migration.

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New York and North Carolina Farmers Joining The U.S. Biomass Crop Assistance Program

New York and North Carolina are the two newest states to join America’s growing biofuel industry. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has authorized an investment of $9.6 million that will be distributed for the creation of the two new projects and the expansion of the already existing project in Arkansas.

Graphic courtesy of Environment, Health, and Safety News.

New York and North Carolina are joining 10 other states – Arkansas, California, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Washington – in the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP), whose purpose is to expand the nation’s non-food grade energy crops to be used in manufacturing liquid biofuels.

The energy crops being grown, such as giant miscanthus, switch grass, and shrub willow, are the “first ever national investments in expanding U.S. biomass resources to meet domestic energy needs,” said the USDA, which adds that the current “total investment in those projects is estimated to be $55 million.”

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Retrofitting U.S. Non-Hydropower Dams Could Amp Power Nationally By 15 Percent, Says Study

Looking to increase renewable energy production at a lower cost to both taxpayers and the environment, the U.S. Department of Energy has come out with a study detailing the potential for retrofitting current non-hydropower dams with the technology needed to produce electric power.

Ranking 24th in the Oak Ridge survey of potential hydropower sites is the non-powered Montgomery (Ala.) Locks & Dam, spanning the Ohio River near Monaca, Pa. Built in the 1930s to increase the navigational depth of a shallow part of the river, this site has the potential to generate nearly 100 MW of electricity. Caption information and photo courtesy of ecology.com.

The study found that among the major benefits to these retrofits would be that the monetary costs and environmental impacts of dam construction have already been incurred, so adding power to existing dams can often be achieved at lower costs, with less risk, and in a shorter timeframe than building new dams.

The study estimates that without building a single new dam, these resources – if fully developed – can produce an electric generating capacity of over 12 gigawatts (GW), equivalent to about 15 percent of the country’s current hydropower power, according to the energy department.

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