Karavasta Solar

active

The proposed investment will support the development of the Karavasta Solar Project (the Project), a 140MW (installed capacity) solar PV plant to be located in the Divjaka and Fier municipalities of Albania. The project is to be developed by Karavasta Solar sh.p.k, an SPV established by Voltalia S.A (Voltalia or the Company”) (https://www.voltalia.com). Voltalia has been selected through competitive tender to design, construct, and operate the project for 30 years and will be acting as both Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) and Operations & Maintenance (O&M) contractor. Construction work began in June 2022 and will take approximately 14 months.The PV plant will be a medium-size utility-grade grid-connected solar-PV power system consisting of approximately 241,400 PV panels attached to model tracking systems, string inverters, 220 kV step-up substation (to be constructed within the proposed boundary of the site), and grid connection equipment. The PV plant will be connected to the national grid via the existing Fier substation and a 19.2 km long, 220 kV overhead transmission line (OHL) to be built by Voltalia and transferred to the transmission system operator upon commissioning. Additional infrastructure will include a building to accommodate SCADA equipment, onsite buried cabling, access tracks, material storage, and temporary office facilities.The PV plant site is located within the Libofsha administrative unit, municipality of Fier, and lies approximately 5 km south of the Karavasta Lagoon. The available land for the PV plant is 196 hectares (ha), with the proposed PV layout footprint occupying a total of 185 hectares. The nearest villages are Hasturkas and Ndërnenas, which lie 800 m and 1500 m, respectively, to the east of the project area. The 220 kV OHL will run approximately 19.2 km in a southeasterly direction from the project site to the Fier substation. The PV plant site is adjacent to Divjaka-Karavasta National Park, a Candidate Emerald Site under the Bern Convention encompassing Karavasta Lagoon Ramsar Site. It is a highly important natural area  in Albania. The project site also partially overlaps (by approximately 50%) with the Karavasta Lagoon Key Biodiversity Area (KBA) and Important Bird Area (IBA) designated for globally threatened bird species, important congregations of wintering and breeding waterbirds, and the endemic Albanian Water Frog.Voltalia commenced an enabling works program in June 2022 within the PV site limited to fencing, drainage, road upgrades, and earthworks.   Before beginning site activities, Voltalia implemented a risk and impacts identification process and developed a program of measures and actions to avoid, minimize, compensate for, or offset potential adverse impacts, aligned with the mitigation hierarchy described in IFC PS1. An independent environmental and social consultant (IESC) was engaged to conduct a physical site visit during the enabling works program.