Gold production requires energy, from the extraction phase through to refining. In Namibia, this activity will be decarbonized at the Otjikoto site thanks to a 10 MW photovoltaic solar power plant.
The decarbonization of the mining industry continues in Namibia. In a partnership with local partners Fortitude and the Oelofse family, independent power producer Sustainable Power Solutions (SPS) will supply clean energy to power the Otjikoto gold mine, located 300 km from the capital Windhoek. To achieve this, SPS plans to build a 10 MW solar power plant on the Maxwell farm in north-central Namibia.
According to SPS, the solar power plant it will finance will be capable of producing around 26,360 MWh of clean energy per year. “This will be the first transfer project implemented under NamPower’s Modified Single Buyer (MSB), which means that the solar plant will not be connected behind the customer’s meter, but at another location on the Namibia Power Corporation (Nampower) grid, with the clean energy generated by the solar plant being allocated or ‘transferred’ to the customer,” says SPS.
A $10 million investment
For the record, the MSB enables independent power producers (IPPs) to generate and sell electricity directly to regional distributors, large industrial and mining companies, and municipalities. “This is an improvement on the previous single-buyer model, in which electricity production could only be sold to NamPower,” says SPS.
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The electricity generated on the Maxwell farm will be fed into the Otjikoto gold mine via the new Eldorado substation of state-owned NamPower. Scheduled to come on stream by the end of 2024, the power plant will require an investment of 200 million Namibian dollars, or 10.6 million US dollars. It’s a high-impact project, since it is expected to offset the Otjikoto gold mine’s emissions of 26,360 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year.
A good point for B2Gold, the country’s largest mining operator, which employs over 900 people in Namibia. Like other mining companies, B2Gold is keen to reduce the environmental impact of its activities elsewhere in Africa. At the Fekola gold mine in Mali, the Canadian group has installed a 30 MWp photovoltaic solar power plant.
Jean Marie Takouleu
