Bidding for the largest solar energy storage project in West Africa: 390MW solar + 200MW battery storage

The developer of a mixed-use industrial park in Togo, West Africa, has launched a tender for a large-scale solar-plus-storage project, which has issued an Expression of Interest (EOI). Pan-African infrastructure developer Arise Integrated IndustrialPlatforms (Arise IIP) is working with the government of the Republic of Togo on the Adétikopé Industrial Platform (PIA), a 400-hectare special economic zone near the country’s capital, Lome. The area will house industrial and logistics hubs, providing access to West Africa through the coast.

Arise IIP issued a notice on July 8 inviting EOI for a DC PV plant with a capacity of 390MWp, plus a 200MW battery energy storage system (BESS) and associated 161KVA substation infrastructure for grid connection. According to the notice, the works are "primarily intended to provide PIA with long-term reliable and sustainable electricity."

Participants have two options to either bid for an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract and five years of operations and maintenance (O&M), or enter into a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Arise IIP in the form of a joint venture. Applicants need to have experience with at least one similar project and be financially able to begin work immediately upon receipt of the contract, with sufficient materials, technical resources and personnel suitable to carry out project work.

Tender documents will be available between 20 and 30 July 2021, after which there will be 12 weeks to submit bids. The project is the largest of its kind announced on the African continent to date, following a number of small-scale solar-plus-storage projects, including grid-connected and microgrid projects, most recently in Madagascar, Somaliland and Mozambique . South Africa has also made history by bidding for more than 1GWh of energy storage projects, making renewable energy projects dispatchable as the country seeks to quickly procure energy capacity to make up for supply shortfalls.