Uganda has placed itself on the map of countries like India embracing solar energy, as it has launched the largest solar plant in East Africa.
The Soroti Solar plant located on 33 acres of land in Soroti District, is made up of 32,680 photovoltaic panels, and has an output of 10 to 12 megawatt. The facility is the country’s first grid-connected solar plant and is expected to generate clean, sustainable electricity to 40,000 households.
It said the power plant has the potential to increase its net output capacity by a further 20 megawatt of solar energy. According to the World Bank, Uganda currently has an 18.2 percent electrification rate.
Costing $19 million, the Soroti plant was developed under the Global Energy Transfer Feed-in Tariff (GET FiT), a dedicated support scheme for renewable energy projects managed by Germany’s KfW Development Bank in partnership with Uganda’s Electricity Regulatory Agency (ERA) and funded by the governments of Norway, Germany, the United Kingdom and, partly, the European Union (EU).
The solar plant overtakes the solar field at the Agahozo Shalom Youth Village in Rwanda, the 42-acre power plant shaped like the African continent, which has a capacity of 8.5 megawatt. Read the full story here.