A $123 million (USD 85.7 million) financing package has been signed off for a 73.7 MW grid-connected solar plant tied to an 80.2 MWh battery energy storage system in Timor-Leste, approximately 722 kilometres northwest of Darwin.
The project is both Timor-Leste’s first utility-scale solar-plus-storage project and its first independent power producer project.
It will be operated by Manatuto Renewables Power, a joint venture company between French utility EDF and Japan’s Itochu Corporation.
The funding package will support the development, construction, operation and maintenance of the solar-plus-storage system and association transmission lines and ancillary facilities.
It consists of $17.5 million in senior loans from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), $27.2 million from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and $17.5 million from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
The agreement also includes concessional loans including a total of $30.4 million from ADB’s Leading Asia’s Private Infrastructure Fund 2, supported by JICA, and Canadian Climate and Nature Fund for the Private Sector in Asia (CANPA), supported by the Canadian government.
An additional $30.4million comes from the World Bank Group’s International Development Association’s Private Sector Window and the IFC Concessional Capital Window.
Electricity generated by the project will be sold to state utility Eletricidade de Timor Leste Empresa Pública under a 25-year power purchase agreement (PPA). The electricity generated is expected to be equivalent to the typical consumption of approximately 80,000 households in the country.
As the country’s first large-scale hybrid renewable project, the site is also set to reduce the country’s reliance on imported diesel. As of 2024, fossil fuels made up almost all of Timor-Leste’s energy mix.
Timor-Leste had installed 1 MW of solar by the end of last year, according to figures published by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), up from 0 MW at the end of the year prior.
From pv magazine Global
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