Gigawatt Global, a solar and social development company and a partner of Power Africa and Power Africa's Beyond the Grid sub-initiative, has signed two international grants for a 7.5 MW solar project in Burundi, where only 4% of the population has residential access to electricity. The proposed project will increase the country's generation capacity by 15%, according to Gigawatt Global, a U.S.-owned Dutch company. The Burundi project follows Gigawatt Global's launch in February of East Africa's largest utility-scale solar field, an 8.5 MW facility in Rwanda on the grounds of the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village near Kigali, which added 6% to the country's electricity generation capacity after its interconnection last year -- and which nabbed the company a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize nomination. The company has secured two grants totaling nearly $1 million for its effort in Burundi: one from Power Africa via the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) and the other from Energy and Environment Partnership (EEP), a coalition representing the British, Finnish and Austrian governments. Gigawatt Global team signs grant agreement for Burundi at USTDA offices Gigawatt Global plans to develop and manage the 7.5 MW solar PV field on a 15-hectare site in the Gitega region, 65 miles (105 kilometers) from the capital of Bujumbura. The facility will produce electricity needed for 60,000 households. The total cost of the project is estimated to be approximately $20 million. "Our impact investment model is to strengthen developing nations, ...Den vollständigen Artikel lesen ...
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