Powering Ghana: USAID & NREL Provide Technical Assistance to Develop First Hydro-solar Plant in West Africa
Aerial view of 50-MW solar PV plant, with 200 additional MW under development. Photo courtesy of BPA.
shift away from fossil fuels, supplement hydro resources during drought periods, and lower energy costs. “The global challenge of climate change, as well as the need to secure energy supply, makes the development of the hydro-solar plant very important for Ghana and West Africa,” said Peter Acheampong, deputy director of renewables at BPA who closely collaborated with the NREL–WAEP team.
“We are equipping them with all the tools and lessons we learned in the United States about VRE integration, and, in some cases, helping them to avoid some of the challenges we had with the latest technology and standards. Having this type of partnership is an effective way to streamline the process of integrating advanced technologies,” said David Corbus, the Wind Grid Integration Lead at NREL and a member of the NREL-WAEP team supporting the Ghana solar project.
“We worked with the Electricity Company of Ghana and the Northern Electricity Distribution Company, where we transferred open-source software to them and gave them training, capacity building, and workshops with utility engineers where we assessed plans and looked at studies for integrated distributed PV,” Corbus said about the team’s contributions to Ghana’s behind-the-meter PV planning.