The first installation at the sector Ministry, would cover 25 per cent of its energy consumption, while the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) would take the rest of the power load, Mr Wisdom Ahiataku-Togobo, Director, Renewable and Nuclear Energy, Ministry of Energy, disclosed to the Ghana News Agency GNA, in an interview.

He said the Ministry was still going through the procurement processes and he was hopeful that it would identify the most responsive bidder and award the contract to the entity by the first week of November for the work to start.

The programme dubbed: “Government Goes Solar” will ensure that government institutions switch to renewable energy to reduce Government’s expenditure on utilities. It also seeks to address the huge expenditure of state institutions to purchase power into prepaid meters.

The Government hopes to access grant and concessional loan facilities to invest in the project in order to reduce its financial burden on the ECG. Mr Ahiataku-Togobo said the Ministry was still looking for financial support from donor partners, as well as some concessionary soft loans, for investment into those segments to be able to fast track the solar distributions in all government buildings.

He explained that feasibility studies to cover the Jubilee House had also been done but said, they added that they were yet to secure funding for that. “There is also an ongoing feasibility studies for the Parliament House, including the Job 600, and then the Ministry of Finance building will be the next one,” he said.

One megawatt solar system has been targeted for the Jubilee House Project.

The Government has emphasised its commitment to increase solar PV generation capacity in the distribution systems to achieve reduced energy cost particularly, for public facilities. These include the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs), Municipalities, Metropolitans, District Assemblies, Universities, Schools and Hospitals.

It has targeted to install up to 200 Megawatts Peak of distributed solar PV generation by 2030 within both residential and non-residential facilities. Mr Ahiataku-Togobo said Ghana was currently in discussions with the German Government under the G20 Compact to support the solar power initiative, while the AfDB/CIF Scale-up Renewable Energy Programme (SREP) was supporting Ghana to implement 15,000 units of distributed solar system.

The Government is also discussing with the Indian Government through the International Solar Alliance (ISA) and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to scale up the integration of solar in public buildings.

Specific priority public buildings that are being considered to be installed by 2020 include the Presidency, the Parliament House, the Ministries starting from the Finance Ministry, the Universities - starting from the University of Ghana and some selected Senior High School buildings.

Mr Ahiataku-Togobo said the strategy was to do all biddings competitively and would be advertised as and when funds were secured.