- B2Gold Namibia, a unit of Canada-based mining company B2Gold Corp., will expand its renewable energy intake at its Otjikoto Mine in central Namibia with a new 10 MW solar plant through a wheeling agreement with Sustainable Power Solutions (SPS).
- SPS is leading the development and funding of the N$200 million investment, which will generate approximately 26 360 MWh of clean renewable energy per year.
- The plant is set to be commissioned in Q1 2025.
- This will be the first wheeling project implemented under NamPower’s Modified Single Buyer (MSB) framework, meaning that the solar plant will not be connected behind the customer’s meter, but at a different location on Nampower’s grid, with the clean energy generated by the solar plant being allocated or ‘wheeled’ to the customer, in this case B2Gold Otjikoto Mine.
Nampower’s MSB framework empowers Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to produce and sell electricity directly to regional electricity distributors, large industrial and mining companies, as well as municipalities. This is an improvement to the previous single-buyer model, where electricity output was restricted to being sold only to NamPower.
The solar plant is being constructed on Maxwell Farm situated in North Central Namibia, and is set to be operational by the end of 2024. The energy will be injected into NamPower’s brand-new Eldorado substation from where it will be allocated under the MSB framework to B2Gold’s Otjikoto Mine, located approximately 300 km north of Windhoek.
B2Gold is Namibia’s leading gold producer, with an estimated gold output of 200,000 ounces in 2023 and a workforce of 976 employees.
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
