German developer Belectric has signed an EPC contract with independent power producer Enlight for Israel’s “largest” repowering solar project.
Retrofitting works will increase the capacity of the Halutziot solar farm – which is located in the Negev desert and was originally commissioned in 2015 – from 55MWp to 88MWp, while an energy storage system will be installed.
The German EPC will replace 180,000 mono-facial 310Wp modules with 161,000 bifacial 540Wp dual glass modules, with the retrofitting including the replacement of the inverters and transformers on site.
Replacement and construction works have already started and are expected to be finished by the second quarter of 2023, with Belectric also taking on O&M services for the repowered project.
Yaron Lado, business development manager at Belectric Israel, said: “We thank Enlight for choosing us to lead this project, including the repowering works, main equipment upgrade and storage system integration all while assuring minimum downtime for the project, connected to the high voltage grid.”
Belectric, which was acquired by Czech utility CEZ last year, recently agreed to install a pipeline of 200MW of solar PV capacity in Germany with IPP AMPYR Solar Europe.
The German developer recently spoke with PV Tech Premium about its interest in constructing agrivoltaics projects as a means of helping European countries to meet their renewables targets.
This article was updated on Thursday 6 October at 14:03 (UTC+1).