A 60MW solar power station in northern Battambang province was commissioned and connected to the national grid last week.
The solar farm is located in southwestern Thma Koul district’s Anlong Run commune and is invested by Shenzhen-listed Risen Energy Co Ltd.
Keo Rottanak, director-general of state-run electricity supplier Electricite du Cambodge (EdC), said the project was part of 450MW of solar power planned to be hooked up to the national grid by 2022.
“This is a reflection of our future plans to deploy more clean energy into the national grid,” he said, adding that the solar farm was linked to the national grid system via a 20km-long transmission line.
“The plant will create hundreds of jobs for people to earn extra income during the Covid-19 outbreak and help sustain further economic growth, especially in the industrial sector which in the future will need a clean-energy mix to support its production process,” he said.
In May, the Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) approved a final registration certificate for the project, with an estimated capital investment value of $50.9 million.
Victor Jona, director general of the Ministry of Mines and Energy’s General Department of Energy, told The Post late in December that the government approved the solar farm during a Council of Ministers Plenary Session in July 2019.
The company signed a purchase agreement with EdC at $0.076 per kilowatt-hour, he said. The project is on Build-Own-Operate basis under a 20-year concession agreement with the state-run energy supplier.
He claimed that Cambodia would not face a shortage of electricity this year, adding that the Kingdom boasts 3,000MW of capacity in the rainy season and 2,200MW in the dry season.
“We will not have a shortage of electricity supply because our supply-demand ratio eclipses the plan, it is higher than the amount of energy we need and even if there’s more demand we’ll be able to import from other neighbouring countries,” Jona said.
