The Sable Solar Park Project is being developed on land owned by Sable Chemical Industries Ltd (‘Sable
Chemicals’). The project site, which is adjacent to Sable Chemicals’ fertilizer production facility at
Sherwood, 20 km outside the city of Kwekwe, on the Harare to Bulawayo highway, comprises
approximately 800 ha of industrial land forming part of Sable Chemicals’ larger estate.
The site benefits from high levels of solar irradiation (GHI of c. 2,140 kWh/m²/annum), as well as access to existing basic site infrastructure (i.e., water, access roads, etc.). It is also approximately 5 km from the Sherwood substation and close enough to Sable Chemicals’ existing facilities to benefit from shared services such as use of railway sidings, treated water, canteens and fire-fighting services.
Sable Solar Park is expected to be Zimbabwe’s largest grid-connected photovoltaic (PV) plant when it comes online. At completion the 400 Megawatt (MW) of electricity generated by the park will account for approximately 10% of the country’s projected medium term energy generation capacity. The energy from the park will supply electricity to the state-owned utility company, ZETDC, and will provide enough energy to power over 250,000 households in Zimbabwe.
The park is being developed in 50MW phases and its first phase has been licensed and is currently being developed by Tatanga Energy through the Sable Solar Energy SPV.