Ghana will soon update its feed-in-tariff (FiT) programme for solar to include the possibility of having contracts last for 20 years, a government official has announced.
Wisdom Ahiataku-Togobo, director of renewables and alternative energy at the Ministry of Power Ghana, told delegates at the Solar and Off-grid Renewables West Africa event in Accra, Ghana, that the FiT for solar PV is due for an update.
He said: “Any moment from today, a new set of feed-in-tariffs will come out and I believe this FiT is going to take into consideration most of your worries.”
He added that many developers had raised concerns and asked for a 20-year period for the FiTs instead of the previous 10 years and this is being accounted for in the next update.
Ahiataku-Togobo cited BXC’s 20MW solar plant in Ghana, that was connected to the grid last Friday – adding: “This is the first private owned largest solar installation that we have in this country and let me emphasize that this was done without credit enhancement from government.”
He said it was unfortunate that most developers look for credit enhancements from the government, and such developers will be subjected to a tendering process, similar to the first 20MW tender that Ghana had recently.
For the first tender, 18 of the companies that advertised have been prequalified and requested to submit their technical and financial proposal.
Ahiataku-Togobo said: “We hope that this tendering process will bring us very attractive solar prices in the country.”
He also reemphasized the target for a maximum of 200MW for the rooftop distributed solar generation scheme and said system owners can benefit from the net metering schemes.
Last week, PV Tech visited the BXC plant, the biggest PV project in East and West Africa, shortly after it was connected to the grid.