Government has announced plans to construct four solar and wind farms in two regions of the country.
The announcement follows an agreement that government signed with a United Arab Emirates based independent power producer- Amea Power.
In the agreement, a 10MW solar photovoltaic power plant and a 10MW wind farm will be constructed in West Nile before January 2021.
The company plans to construct the largest facility in the Karamoja region, according to the head of Amea Power, Mr Hussain bin Jassim Al-Nowais.
Mr Hussain said “the company will build a wind farm with a capacity of 120MW. The solar plant will supply 80MWp to the electricity grid”.
Uganda has abundant energy resources that are fairly distributes across the country including solar, biomass, hydro -power, geothermal, fossil fuels and peat.
Hydro – power in Uganda is estimated to be 2,000 MW, 450 MW of geothermal, 1,650MW of biomass cogeneration, 460 million tonnes of biomass standing stock with a sustainable annual yield of 50 million tonnes.
The country also has an average of 5.1kWh/m2 of solar energy and about 250 million tonnes of peat (800MW).
The overall renewable energy power generation potential is estimated to be 5,300MW.
According to the existing data, solar energy resource in Uganda is available throughout the year with a variation (max month / min month) of only about maximum 20 per cent (from 4.5 to 5.5 W / m2).
This is due to Uganda’s location near the equator. The insolation is highest in the dryer area in the north – east and very low in the mountains in the east and south – west.
Wind measurements have shown an average wind speed of 3.7m / s. This indicates that the wind energy resource in Uganda is insufficient for large-scale electricity generation.
