Portugal’s MCA Group Energises Cazombo Off-Grid Solar-Plus-Storage Park in Angola

The Angolan government and the Portuguese group MCA energized an off-grid renewable energy system encompassing 75.26 MWh of battery storage alongside 25.40 MW of solar in Angola. 

Located in the capital of the new province of Moxico Leste, a remote region more than 1,500 km from Luanda, the project built by the Portuguese company MCA includes innovative technologies, including a battery storage system and Blackstart technology, which allows automatic start-up in the event of failures. Described as Angola’s first and Africa’s largest stand-alone renewable energy system, the Cazombo Photovoltaic Park is engineered to operate on solar power during the day and draw from its battery storage at night, eliminating the need for any fossil-fuel generation. The installation will provide reliable electricity to more than 136,000 residents in Cazombo, the municipal capital of the Moxico Leste province in eastern Angola. This facility is the first completed asset within Angola’s Rural Electrification Project, a national program aimed at deploying solar plants paired with battery storage to build independent minigrids in remote, off-grid regions. The Cazombo installation was financed by Standard Chartered Bank in the UK, backed by a roughly €1 billion (US$1.16 million) guarantee from Germany’s Euler Hermes, with additional reinsurance provided by the Portuguese export agency Cosec and Korea’s K-Sure. 

Cazombo is among 60 sites targeted under Angola’s national electrification strategy, which aims to deliver power to over 200,000 households and improve energy access for roughly one million people. According to Minister of Energy and Water João Baptista Borges, the overall investment in this program surpasses US$1 billion. The broader solar initiative also covers projects in the provinces of Bié, Malanje, Lunda Norte, Lunda Sul, Moxico and Moxico Leste, forming part of an electrification program that will deploy 256 MWp of solar capacity along with 595 MWh of battery storage.