Golomoti wins Utility-scale project of the year

JCM Power is pleased to announce that the Golomoti project has won the prestigious title of “Utility-scale solar project of the year” by the Africa Solar Industry Association (AFSIA). The announcement was made during AFSIA’s annual awards ceremony held last week in Brussels at the Africa Energy Forum.

The AFSIA Awards are designed to recognise and celebrate outstanding contributions made by companies and individuals to promote and advance the use of solar across Africa. The awards recognise good practice, professionalism, quality, safety and innovation, with the aim of being a marker of the ‘brightest and best’ that the African solar industry has to offer.

The Golomoti project is Malawi’s second solar IPP after JCM’s Salima solar project and proudly boasts the first utility-scale grid-connected battery energy storage system in Sub-Saharan Africa (5MW/10MWh), having connected to the grid in December 2021. JCM Power managed the procurement and construction for the project.

This project, a utility-scale solar + BESS project, is the first of its kind in Malawi and the largest of its kind across Sub-Saharan Africa.  For its ingenuity, it was also awarded the Battery Storage Project of the Year by IJGlobal in 2021. The project consists of 53,200 highly efficient bifacial solar panels, spans approximately 55 hectares of land, and is expected to produce an average of more than 55 GWh of clean energy each year for the next 20+ years.

Golomoti’s sister project, Salima solar, was commissioned late last year. Together, the two plants now deliver 80MWac of clean power to Malawi’s national grid.