Greenyellow secures €21m financing for 30 MW solar park in Burkina Faso

From pv magazine France

French renewable energy developer GreenYellow, a unit of the Casino Group, has been awarded a €21 million loan by Dutch development bank FMO for its solar power plant in Nagréongo, Burkina Faso.

The money will be given in three tranches of €7.9 million, €7 million, and €6.1 million, by FMO’s Fund for Access to Energy. “We look forward to contributing to a substantial increase in production capacity from renewable resources in Burkina Faso, at lower costs,” said Huub Cornelissen, director of energy at FMO.

This project is the second of four solar power plants that FMO is financing in Burkina Faso. The two partners want long-term collaboration for future projects on the African continent or in other geographies. “The signing of this project with FMO supports our ambitions in Africa, a strategic market in renewable energies where we continue to strengthen our presence in the IPP segment,” said Robinson Alazraki, Africa director of GreenYellow.

Launched last fall, the Nagréongo power station, located about 30km northeast of Ouagadougou and scheduled for commissioning at the end of 2021, will have an installed capacity of 30 MW. With an annual production of 50 GWh, it will save 27,500 tons of CO₂ per year.

Initiated within the framework of public-private partnerships signed with the state of Burkina Faso in 2019, the solar power plant will supply all the electricity it produces to national utility Sonabel. Entirely developed and built by GreenYellow, which will operate and maintain it, this plant will be the largest in GreenYellow’s portfolio.

Burkina Faso had only 62 MW of solar generation capacity at the end of last year, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. However, large PV projects are taking shape in the West African state, such as the 30 MW plant that Axpo Group business Urbasolar began constructing near Pâ in February and two solar plants totaling 30 MW under construction by Engie.