Botswana launches tender for solar plants
Botswana Power Corp., Botswana's national power utility, has launched a tender for the development and construction of six solar PV power plants across the sub-Saharan country.
One of the projects will be located in Maun, a town on the Thamalakane River in northern Botswana. The other two tendered projects are planned for Lobatse, in the southeastern part of the country, and Ghanzi, in the middle of the Kalahari Desert in western Botswana.
The company has not provided any details on the combined and individual capacity of the solar plants, nor has it revealed the technical requirements for their construction. Interested developers have until Sept. 15 to submit their proposals.
Botswana also aims to deploy large-scale PV through several tenders. In addition, the Ministry of Mineral Resources, Green Technology and Energy Security (MMGE) launched a net-metering scheme for rooftop PV systems in late 2020.
According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), the country reached an installed PV capacity of only 6 MW at the end of 2022.
