The Sunday News
Dumisani Nsingo, Senior Business Reporter
A JOINT venture company, De Green Rhino Energy has concluded a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) for the supply of 50 megawatts (MW) into the national grid from its projected $85-million solar power plant in Marondera.
De Green Rhino Energy chairman Mr Ishmael Kaguru said the company agreed on a tariff for the power it would be channeling onto the national grid last month.
“Our investors recently sent a team of legal experts to work out a PPA between our company and ZETDC and that has since been concluded. We agreed on a tariff of $0,17 per kilowatt. The second issue we are working on at the moment is getting a sovereign guarantee from the Government. The sovereign or Government guarantee will ensure that in case ZETDC fails to pay us our tariffs, the Government will do so. However, this will be just a formality,” Mr Kaguru said.
De Green Rhino is a partnership between a local company De Opper Trading and a United Kingdom clean energy company, Green Rhino Energy. The company was issued with an electricity generation licence by the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority in December 2014.
Its solar farm has the capacity to produce 150MW upon upgrading at a total cost of $400 million. De Green Rhino’s proposed solar farm is one of the various power infrastructural development projects aimed at reducing the country’s electricity deficit of more than 1 000MW.
“Marondera is one of the few areas in the country with the best conditions for solar photovoltaic and our project will contribute immensely in reducing the power deficit we are facing. We are also working on a financial closure with our investor and we are looking at starting the project sometime in October and it will take 11 to 12 months to complete,” Mr Kaguru said.
The company has already shortlisted three foreign companies to do work at the site in line with their expertise.
