The Ministry of the Environment has approved the applications made by Stor'sun 1 Ltd and Stor'sun 2 Ltd. On August 5, a little over three months ago, the two companies made a request to build a solar farm of respectively 30 MW and 10 MW on the land of the Constance La Gaieté group in Trou-d'Eau-Douce . The electricity proposed to be generated is intended to be injected into the Central Electricity Board (CEB) grid.
EIA (Environment Impact Assessment) permits were granted by the Ministry of the Environment for the two solar parks last Friday.
On the other hand, strict conditions are attached to these requests. In both cases, permission to operate these infrastructures is only granted for a period of 25 years. The reason put forward by the ministry is that the sites “are located in a potential location of mineral resources” and are located “within a 1 km buffer in line with the Protection of Mineral Resources of the Outline Planning Scheme for the Moka/Flacq district”.
It is now up to the operator to see if it is, financially speaking, worth it to still move forward with the construction and management of these two solar farms. Note that the CEB has already given a letter of intent to the promoter.
Stor'sun Ltd and Stor'sun 2 Ltd have the French group Qair as their main shareholder. He also proposes to build a solar farm in Balaclava and another in Petite-Rivière. Four Power Purchase Agreements have already been signed with the CEB less than six months ago. The group plans to inject a total of Rs 7 billion.
35 MW capacity
The group already operates two solar farms as well as a wind farm. The latter is located in Plaines-des-Roches. The three have a combined capacity of 35 MW. The two solar farms proposed for Trou-d'Eau-Douce have a greater capacity than the already existing solar and wind farms. In the files filed with the Ministry of the Environment, Stor'sun Ltd and Stor'sun 2 Ltd explain that their initiatives are part of the “energy strategy of the Mauritian government which consists of increasing the share of renewable energies in the national energy mix to 60% by 2030”.
The promoter also specifies that “the energy sector in Mauritius is largely dependent on imported fossil fuels and there is a need to reduce this dependence in order to increase the country's energy security as well as to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. which is the main cause of global warming. Mauritius, being a tropical island, has enormous potential to harness solar energy for electricity generation. In this regard, the government had defined the long-term energy strategy 2009-2025 through which it aimed to increase the share of electricity produced from renewable energies to 35% by 2025. The 2030 roadmap for the electricity sector was finalized in May 2022. According to this, it is expected that the share renewable energies in the electricity mix will reach 60% by 2030.
