Basic Costings for the Kalahari Solar Power Generation Plant
Overview of the Costing and budget analysis:
The basic due diligence request was for the cost of a turnkey solar plant in the Kalahari
with 3200 sunshine hours which was initially costed at 100MW output, which was
requested to be upscaled to 300-500 MW.
First, economies of scale will reduce the per MW cost. For Photo Voltaic (PV), larger
plants usually have lower per MW costs because fixed costs get spread out. It should
be mentioned that the original PV cost was $0.8M to $1.5M per MW.
For 300-500 MW, maybe it drops to $0.7M to $1.3M per MW.
Please confirm typical industry scaling factors as Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
might not scale as much because of complexity, so such solar power generation might
keep the per MW higher than a PV type of operation.
To calculate the basic total budget for a 500 MW PV, using $0.7M to $1.3M per MW
gives a rough cost of between $350M to $650M.
A full breakdown will need to be compiled with all the components like panels,
inverters, etc., able to be scaled, but maybe not linearly. For example, inverters might
have some savings, but grid connection costs could be higher if the larger plant needs
more infrastructure.
Additional Power Requirements for Provision of Desalinated Water and Pumping Stations
For a 500 MW plant, total costs could range from 400M to 1B+ depending on
technology, storage, and grid requirements.
Kalahari’s world-class irradiation makes it one of the most cost-effective regions for
solar globally.
The following is a summary of the additional solar power generation plant required
to operate the proposed desalination plant and pump the clean water from Namibia to
Botswana with an initial expectation of direct use by the main infrastructure regions
of Botswana until Zotus City is being built and onwards to what is projected
to be the ultimate requirement for additional power generation to feed the water
supply to Botswana and Zotus City
City’s 300MW solar power plant will provide clean, renewable energy to fuel innovation, industry, and sustainable living, with surplus energy benefiting the entire region.”