The government of Sri Lanka has entered into a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Australian firm United Solar Group (USG) for a major solar and storage project.
The country’s Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera announced the PPA on X, formerly known as Twitter, yesterday (12 December).
“Cabinet approval was granted yesterday to enter into a PPA with United Solar Group (USG) of Australia to invest in a 700MW solar power project with a 1500MWh of battery energy storage system,” he said.
“The Solar power project will be installed on the surface of the Poonakary Tank in the Killinochi District, with a Foreign Direct Investment of US$1.727 billion.”
The project is being developed by USG’s local subsidiary in Sri Lanka United Solar Energy SL Pvt Company. On its site, it says that US$500 million of the investment is earmarked for domestic project components.
USG was founded in Australia by electrical, computing and telecommunications entrepreneur Richard Vargas, with plans to build over 20,000MW of renewable energy capacity over the next six years globally, it claims.
It didn’t say what PV or storage technology the project would utilise, nor when it expected it to come online.
It would be among the largest solar-plus-storage projects in the world and certainly the largest built in Sri Lanka. Though few if any large-scale energy storage projects have been announced there, the government did recently kick off a 70MW ground-mounted solar tender scheme, as reported by our sister site PV Tech.
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