ACWA Power secures $142m financing for RE projects in Uzbekistan

The loans will fund a solar and battery facility in the Central Asian country.

ACWA Power has secured a $142m financing package from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) for solar and battery storage projects in Uzbekistan.

In a statement, EBRD said the package consists of two senior secured loans that will fund two special-purpose vehicles (SPVs). These will introduce the largest combined solar photovoltaic system with 1 gigawatt (GW) and a battery energy storage system (BESS) with 1,336 megawatt-hour (MWh) capacity in Uzbekistan and across the region.

The first loan worth $61m will be provided to ACWA Power Sazagan Solar 1 for the development, construction and operation of a 500 megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic power plant and a 668 MWh BESS in the Samarkand region of Uzbekistan.

The second loan worth $ 81m will be made available to ACWA Power Sazagan Solar 2 for the development, construction and operation of a 500 MW solar photovoltaic power plant in the Samarkand region and a 668 MWh BESS in Uzbekistan’s Bukhara region.

The project is expected to be co-financed by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, Nippon Export and Investment Insurance covered lenders, the Asian Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank.

Once commissioned, the new renewable energy capacity is expected to generate around 2,300 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year that can power 600,000 households annually.

The EBRD is a major financier of green energy projects in Uzbekistan, having supported 1.65 GW of wind capacity, 1.4 GW of solar photovoltaic and 334 MW/501 MWh of BESS in the country.