Ghana cap puts brakes on utility-scale solar

Ghana has put the brakes on its utility-scale solar market with the West African country establishing a temporary cap of 150MW.

Individual projects vying for support under Ghana’s solar feed-in tariff (FiT) are to be restricted to a maximum of 20MW within that overall limit until the country’s first large PV projects are built and their impact on its grid assessed.

Ghana’s authorities have been forced to introduce the cap after being overwhelmed with applications for generation licences under the country’s fledgling feed-in tariff programme.

Details of the measure emerged yesterday at the first day of the Solar & Off-Grid Renewables West Africa conference taking place in Ghana’s capital, Accra.

Addressing the conference, Ghana’s deputy minister for power, John Jinapor, said he was encouraged by the “overwhelming interest” among investors in utility-scale solar in Ghana, but said the imposition of restrictions had been made necessary to “maintain the integrity of the national grid”....read more here