The Ministry of Energy, Water and Hydrocarbons in Madagascar is looking at development of 3 solar power plants with 5 MW capacity each to be built in 2019. Out of these, 2 projects will be located in Analamanga region and 1 project in Vakinankaratra region.
Announcing this news on its social media handles, the ministry said it had entered into an agreement with French utility scale solar power project company Tryba Energy for these projects.
This capacity should be additional to the 30 MW to 40 MW solar facilities the country is eying under the World Bank's Scaling Solar Initiative. For a 25 MW solar PV tender with battery storage capacity launched under the program, Madagascar has shortlisted 6 developers for the same (see Six Developers Pre-Qualify For Madagascar Tender).
According to a January 2018 power sector report on the country, the World Bank said about 58% of Madagascar's power generation in 2016 came from low-efficiency generators running on imported fuel. The other 42% came from hydropower plants. There is considerable potential to exploit its solar power resources, however, Madagascar needs to upgrade its grid infrastructure to be able to achieve diversification of its power generation capacity.