South Africa's GSC Confirms Construction Start on Cameroon PV Plant

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Written by Richard Finlayson, Senior International Editor for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--GSC Energy (Johannesburg, South Africa) has confirmed it will begin construction on a 500-megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic (PV) park in Cameroon in the third quarter of this year.

The $220 million Extreme Nord Maroua project will be sited on 600 hectares in northern Cameroon. Steven Moti, founder and chairman of GSC, said this week that the project would generate up to 4,000 jobs, both in South Africa and Cameroon, with 20% to 30% of the materials being sourced from South Africa, and the balance from China.

In 2013, GSC signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Cameroon government. The project has been through various financial and feasibility studies.

The GSC-led consortium includes Sun Value (Braunau Am Inn, Austria), Tricom Structures (Silverton, South Africa) and Conco (Midrand, South Africa). With scheduled completion in 2019, the facility would rank as one of the largest PV power plants, both in Africa and the world. It would generate enough power for 50,000 homes and eliminate 70,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions annually.

Cameroon has available generating capacity of about 1,000 MW, and plans to invest $12 billion to increase the total capacity to more than 3,000 MW through 2020.

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