Italian Oil Exploration Company, ENI is set to provide up to 50 megawatts of solar energy in the Northern Savannah Ecological zone of the country.
The project forms part of efforts to increase Ghana’s energy supply to meet the increased demand.
The project is also in partnership with the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA).
Speaking at a signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding with SADA, the Managing Director of ENI Ghana, Fabio Cavanna stressed that the move will help Ghana meet its long term energy objectives.
According to ENI, the signing is also to allow a joint evaluation of development opportunities in the renewable energy sector.
“In order to define the appropriate location and the suitability and viability of the project, we have to run some pre-analysis trying to identify some possible location but of course we will have to work together with SADA for defining all these details,” Fabio Cavanna stated.
He added, “We are in the pre-feasibility phase and if everything goes as we expect, we may target to start the project between 2017 and 2018.”
Meanwhile the CEO of SADA, Charles Abugre also assured of his outfit’s preparedness to provide the needed support to facilitate the project and improve the lives of persons within the ecological zone.
“SADA will provide all the support necessary to ENI; for the technical studies; the location of the appropriate areas, solving the land problems, helping and supporting them with some of the complicated regulatory arrangement that need to be done for the plant to be actually on the ground and operating, that commitment is part of what we are signing today,” he opined.
The SADA zone accounts for about 54.4% of the total landmass of Ghana and endowed with huge untapped potential in the area of solar energy.
SADA also maintained it places a lot of premium on the partnership with ENI on the solar project as that translated into job creation in the zone and the generation of power for irrigation and commercial agriculture.
ENI has already signed a seven billion dollar contract to produce oil and gas at the offshore cape three points in the Western region.
The project is set to commence in the third quarter of 2017.
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)