- Engie will install a 355kWp rooftop solar plant at Orange’s data centre in the Ivory Coast.
- The plant will meet 60 per cent of the centre’s daytime energy needs.
- The plant is set to be commissioned in H2 2022.
Orange has signed a deal with Engie for the supply of solar power to its GOS (Groupement Orange Services) facility in Grand Bassam, Côte d’Ivoire. The GOS is a resource-pooling entity providing pooled hosting and infrastructure operation services, service platforms and IT to Orange’s eighteen Middle East and Africa (OMEA) subsidiaries. Engie will install a cumulative 355kWp via rooftop solar and solar carports at the facility under an Energy as a service (EaaS) model.
The plant will comprise 784 latest-generation photovoltaic cells providing about 527 MWh/year of clean energy. According to a statement from Orange, the plant’s architecture is designed to work 7 days a week in self-consumption mode, directly utilising the energy produced from the sun. This is expected to meet about 60 per cent of the centre’s daytime energy needs. The solar plant is expected to be commissioned in the second half of the year.
Alioune Ndiaye, Chairman and CEO of Orange Middle East and Africa stated, “This project is a first in West Africa for Orange in terms of its size and scope and it perfectly illustrates our ambition to speed up our solar projects in order to achieve net-zero carbon by 2040. In the rest of Africa and the Middle East, we have already implemented several initiatives, as equipping 5,400 telecoms sites with solar panels and building solar farms in Jordan and Mali. We intend to go further.”
Armand Seya, CEO of ENGIE Services West Africa stated, “Engie Africa is active in electricity production, energy services and decentralized solutions for off-grid customers across the continent. We are proud to support the GOS (Groupement Orange Services) in its energy transition having ensured the multi-technical maintenance of the Data Center since 2019 and now with the implementation of this solar plant.”