The Mata ‘o e La‘a Solar Facility or Vaini Solar Facility is a
photovoltaic power plant
A photovoltaic power station, also known as a solar park, solar farm, or solar power plant, is a large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic power system (PV system) designed for the supply of merchant power. They are different from most building ...
in
Vaini,
Tongatapu
Tongatapu is the main island of Tonga and the site of its capital, Nukuʻalofa, Nukualofa. It is located in Tonga's southern island group, to which it gives its name, and is the country's most populous island, with 74,611 residents (2016), 70.5% o ...
,
Tonga
Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania. The country has 171 islands, of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in the southern Pacific Ocean. accordin ...
.
History
The construction of the power plant started in 2014. It was then officially opened by
King
King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...
Tupou VI
Tupou VI (ʻAho‘eitu ʻUnuakiʻotonga Tukuʻaho; born 12 July 1959) is King of Tonga.
The youngest child of King Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV, he served as Prime Minister of Tonga from 2000 to 2006. Following his elder brother's accession to the ...
on 29 May 2015.
Technical specifications
The power plant has an installed capacity of 1MW.
The plant is connected to
Maama Mai Solar Farm through 15 km long
fiber-optic cable
A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical-fiber cable, is an assembly similar to an electrical cable but containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fiber elements are typically individually coated with p ...
.
Finance
The power plant was constructed at a cost of US$14.7million funded by the
Japan International Cooperation Agency
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (), also known as JICA'','' is a governmental agency that delivers the bulk of Official Development Assistance (ODA) for the government of Japan. It is chartered with assisting economic and social gr ...
.
See also
*
Economy of Tonga
Tonga's economy is characterized by a large nonmonetary sector and a heavy dependence on remittances from the half of the country's population that lives abroad, chiefly in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. Much of the monetary sec ...
References
2015 establishments in Tonga
Energy infrastructure completed in 2015
Photovoltaic power stations in Tonga
Tongatapu
{{Tonga-stub