The first energy cooperative Soniachne Misto plans to launch a pilot project for the construction of a solar power station with a capacity of 100-150 kW at the expense of crowdfunding in Slavutych in 2019.
This was announced by Soniachne Misto head Andriy Zinchenko at the third Ukrainian-German forum “BEA: Bioenergy, Energy Efficiency and Agribusiness” in Kharkiv.
“The city leases several municipal houses to the cooperative, on which solar power stations will be built for the funds raised. Energy from the solar plants will be sold at feed-in tariffs. Part of the profit will be paid to cooperative members, another part will be redistributed for energy efficient measures in the city,” Slavutych Mayor Yuriy Fomichev said at a press briefing.
“Legally, we will conduct campaigns for the sale of shares in the cooperative, the yield will be verifiable depending on the size of the contribution,” Zinchenko told Interfax-Ukraine.
“The model provides for a dynamic approach to the size of contribution depending on the city and station size. In Slavutych, we focus on EUR300-400, but it will be possible to make larger contributions or take several shares,” Soniachne Misto co-founder Oleksiy Mykhailenko said.
According to the founders of the cooperative, the capacity of the pilot project of solar plants will be 100-150 kW, the approximate cost is $100,000-150,000.
CROWDFUNDING, ENERGY COOPERATIVE, PILOT PROJECT, SLAVUTYCH, SOLAR PLANT, SONIACHNE MISTO
China’s Trina Solar Limited has announced the delivery of photovoltaic modules with a total capacity of 123 MW for a solar power plant project, implemented by Ukraine’s largest private energy holding DTEK. “The construction of a power plant, the contractor of which is China Machinery Engineering Corporation (CMEC), is to be completed in early 2019, and in March the facility will be connected to the national power system,” the Chinese company said in a statement.
Trina Solar said that the design capacity of the station, located near Nikopol in Dnipropetrovsk region, is 246 MW.
“After the completion of construction and installation work, this facility will become the largest solar farm in the region, as well as the largest exclusively solar power plant in Europe,” the release says.
According to the report, the facility will be able to generate 280 million kWh of solar energy per year, which will allow it becoming one of the three leading suppliers of similar energy resources in Europe. The plant will be able to fully meet the needs of 100,000 households in Ukraine and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 300,000 tonnes per year.
Trina Solar, founded in 1997, is one of the world’s leading suppliers of integrated solutions for solar energy.
The consortium Enerparc AG-Rodina Energy Group plans to increase the capacity of its solar power plants in the Chornobyl exclusion zone from 1 MW to 100 MW, CEO of Rodina Energy Group Yevgeniy Variagin has said at a press conference in Kyiv. “We have plans to develop this project, to expand it to about 100 MW. And we are working on this with our partners,” he said.
Enerparc AG-Rodina Energy Group has recently officially put into operation a pilot solar station with a capacity of 1 MW near Chornobyl nuclear power plant. As reported, the construction of a pilot solar plant was completed in early 2018, in summer it got a feed-in tariff.
Solar Chornobyl LLC (Kyiv) in 2017 rented part of a concrete platform near the facility “Chornobyl NPP’s second phase switchgear” with an area of 1.7 hectares for the implementation of the solar plant construction project by Enerparc AG-Rodina Energy Group.
Сypriot PVK Energy Investment, part of ICU Group, has acquired Solar Capital LLC (Kherson), whose beneficiary was previously Iryna Barakh, the wife of chief military prosecutor Anatoliy Matios, according to information in the state register. “The acquisition of Solar Capital is another step in the development of our investment business in the field of alternative energy,” Kostiantyn Stetsenko, the managing partner of ICU, told Interfax-Ukraine.
He noted that the first project of the group in this direction is the construction of Kamyanets-Podilsky solar plant.
“Now we are investing in the construction of a solar power plant in Kherson region. This investment is our contribution to the renewal of generating capacities in Ukraine, energy independence by reducing dependence on imported fossil resources and the implementation of the national plan for the share of renewable energy sources,” he said.
Earlier, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine agreed the deal.
According to the state register, Solar Capital was registered on February 15 of this year with a charter capital of UAH 4.5 million. Its head is Yevhen Barakh, who from mid-July also heads MS Social Project, part of ICU Group, planning to build Ukraine’s largest plant for processing solid domestic waste in Zhytomyr.
UDP Renewables, part of UFuture Group of Vasyl Khmelnytsky, has built a solar power plant with an installed capacity of 18 MW in Kherson region, the businessman said on his Facebook page. “UDP Renewables has built an 18 MW solar plant in Rykove (Kherson region). Considering the fact that the Kherson sun is much more efficient than in Kyiv, we plan to fully pay back the investment ($18 million) in five or six years. The station will be connected in a few months,” he wrote. Khmelnytsky added that during the construction of the solar plant, racks, cables and inverters of Ukrainian origin were used, while solar panels were imported from China. To build the station, according to the businessman, the territory of the former industrial zone, unusable for agriculture, was used.
As reported, earlier the group of Khmelnytsky built the first stage of a solar plant with a capacity of 6 MW in the village of Velyka Dymerka of Kyiv region. After the construction of the first stage, the group attracted Spanish-based Acciona Energia Global as a partner for the expansion of the project.
UFuture Investment Group, headquartered in Brussels, was established in autumn 2017 and united the business projects of Vasyl Khmelnytsky. The group includes the Ukrainian development company UDP, whose specialization is the implementation of large infrastructure projects. In addition, the conglomerate united businesses in such areas as UDP Renewables, the Bila Tserkva industrial park, the innovative parks UNIT.City, and LvivTech.City.
The Slovenian company Riko in August this year will begin the construction of a solar power plant with a capacity of 10.6 MW near Zhytomyr, mayor of the regional center Serhiy Sukhomlin, who signed a contract with director of the Slovenian company Janez Skrabec, has said. “The plant will be built near the village of Hlybochytsia on a plot of 18 hectares. It is planned to complete the work by August 2019 … Special thanks to the members of the government of the Republic of Slovenia for the issue of EUR3 million grant funds for this project,” Sukhomlin wrote on Facebook.
He noted this is the second project that Riko will implement in Zhytomyr: previously Slovenia won a tender for the reconstruction of the drinking water pumping station of municipal enterprise Zhytomyrvodokanal.
Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Services of Ukraine Hennadiy Zubko, in turn, congratulated Zhytomyr with the launch of such an ambitious project and expressed belief that the city has all chances to become Ukraine’s first city having its own solar power plant. “Financing the project: credit facilities plus financial support from the government of Slovenia plus city guarantees,” Zubko wrote on his Facebook page. He also noted that the future effect for Zhytomyr is about EUR1.65 million of additional revenue per year, and also the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
