Lekela forges ahead with Senegal battery plant

Lekela Power BV, the company with the most renewable energy assets in Africa, plans to soon complete financial arrangements for the biggest battery storage facility in the west of the continent and plans to expand into providing electricity for green hydrogen projects.

The Amsterdam-based company intends to build a 160-megawatt-hour battery plant next to its 159-megawatt Parc Eolien Taiba N’diaye wind-powered power facility in Senegal, said Chris Antonopoulos, Lekela’s chief executive officer (CEO), stressing that they are separate projects.

“We are looking for much more,” Antonopoulos said of battery storage, adding that South Africa is an attractive market for such investments.

Currently in the process of being taken over by Africa Finance Corp and Egypt’s Infinity Group, Lekela is also considering partnering with green hydrogen producers, and “in Egypt, in particular, you’re probably going to hear very soon from us,” he said.

With power-starved African countries looking to add to their generation capacity, Lekela is seeking to as much as quadruple the size of its generation capacity within four years at a cost of Us$4bil (Rm18.3bil) to Us$5bil (Rm22.9bil), according to the CEO.

The company currently has about one gigawatt of wind-power capacity in South Africa, Senegal and Egypt and is building a 150-megawatt plant in Ghana. — Bloomberg