A 39MW solar power plant in far northwestern Cambodia’s Banteay Meanchey province has been successful brought to the national grid, Shenzhen-listed solar development company JA Solar Technology Co Ltd has announced.

The company noted that it supplied all photovoltaic (PV) modules for the project, which convert solar radiations directly to direct-current (DC) electricity.

The solar farm was contracted by Shanxi Electric Power Engineering Co Ltd (SEPEC), an affiliate of China Energy Engineering Group, it said.

“It is the largest renewable energy project in terms of installation capacity in the province, and the first fully grid connected project among the first five PV demonstration projects approved by the Cambodian government.

“To ensure the project was connected to the grid on time, JA Solar completed the timely delivery of the modules through overcoming multiple adverse factors including price hike in the supply chain caused by domestic and international PV installation rush in the latter half of 2020,” JA Solar said.

The solar farm adds 39MW to Cambodia’s clean-energy portfolio, which the Kingdom plans to expand to 450MW by the end of next year, according to Ministry of Mines and Energy’s General Department of Energy director-general Victor Jona.

He previously told The Post that Cambodia would not face a shortage of electricity this year, adding that the Kingdom boasts 3,000MW of capacity in the rainy season and 2,200MW in the dry season.

“We will not have a shortage of electricity supply because our supply-demand ratio eclipses the plan, it is higher than the amount of energy we need and even if there’s more demand we’ll be able to import from other neighbouring countries,” he said.

JA Solar and Shanxi Electric Power Engineering have worked on other solar farms such as the 257MW project in the southern Vietnamese province of Phu Yen’s Hoa Hoi commune and what JA Solar called the “Son My 52.5MW PV project”.

“Southeast Asia has rich solar radiation resources, which provides favourable conditions for the development of the PV industry.

“In recent years, JA Solar has been actively developing in the southeast Asian market, and has supplied modules for typical PV projects including the largest PV project in southeast Asia, the largest floating PV project in Thailand, the first bifacial-plus-trackers project in Malaysia, through which the company promotes the development of the local PV market with its high-quality products and services,” JA Solar said.

On the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, JA Solar’s share price rose 0.82 yuan ($0.13) or 3.00 per cent to close at 28.19 yuan on March 11 for a market capitalisation of 44.97 billion yuan, with 11.48 million shares traded.