The project, which is set to be carried out in four phases, is meant to augment power generation at Lake Kariba as the Kariba floating solar project takes shape.
This comes as the company, IEUG, recently said it will need over US$3 billion in the next five years to transmit electricity from areas of power surplus to regions in deficit in the country.
In a recent presentation, Green Hybrid Power managing director Caleb Dengu said the Kariba floating solar project optimises the usage of the existing transmission infrastructure and it will also augment the power generation capacity of the dam by over 30%.
The majority of current power generation in Zimbabwe is dependent on coal-fired power stations and Dengu said “this project will help achieve our national decarbonation targets”.
“To augment power generation at Kariba, Green Hybrid Power (Pvt) Ltd is developing a 1 000MW hybrid floating solar PV project in four phases,” he said.
“The first phase of 250MW is to be implemented in less than 18 months and the project investment cost is estimated to be US$250 million.
“The hydro-floating solar hybrid project at Kariba could/will integrate three clean sources of energy: hydro (already existing and operational assets), solar and battery energy storage system (BESS) (new assets to be developed).”