Gridworks To Invest $50 Million In Virunga Power To Ramp Up Run-Of-River Hydro Projects Across Several African Countries
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Gridworks, is a UK government-backed investor in Africa’s electricity networks. It is wholly owned by British International Investment, the UK’s development finance institution. Gridworks invests in transmission, distribution, and distributed renewable energy, both on and off-grid. Gridworks says that its focus is to create development impact by connecting Africa’s people and businesses to reliable, affordable, clean power.
Distributed mini hydro plants around perennial rivers offer opportunities to provide reliable baseload power for rural communities. Virunga Power, a leading rural electric utility on the African continent that develops, invests in, and operates distributed renewable power generation and grid distribution projects, has a strong focus on run-of-river small hydro generation between 1 MW and 20 MW installed capacity. Virunga has built a pipeline of these mini hydro projects in several East and Southern African countries including Burundi, Malawi, Zambia, and Kenya. To help accelerate these projects, Gridworks is investing up to $50 million in Virunga Power.