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President Yoweri Museveni on 9 January formally commissioned the 24MW Kabulasoke solar photovoltaic plant. The plant, which began commercial operations on 30 December, is located at the Namulaba and Butiti villages in the central Gomba district, and was developed by Germany-based Xsabo Group, owned by Ugandan-born David Alobo, with Great Lakes Africa Energy (GLAE), which came in as lead financial and technical investor, replacing another German company, Mola Solar Systems Ltd.

The Uganda Electricity Generation Company Limited (UEGCL), has said the 183MW Isimba dam is ready for commissioning at the end of January. UEGCL corporate affairs manager Simon Kasyate told the Daily Monitor the dam’s four Kaplan turbine generator units were running by 10 January when the UEGCL board concluded a routine appraisal of the project.Isimba is being built by China International Water and Electric Corporation (CWE) through a $567.7m contract 85% funded by the Export-Import Bank of China.

Tullow Oil hopes to complete a farm-down of its Uganda assets in H1 2019 once a tax dispute with the government is settled. Tullow said in November it was hoping to resolve the issue by the end of 2018, paving the way for a final investment decision (FID) on the upstream oil development in H1 2019. In a 16 January trading statement, Tullow said the farm-down was now expected to complete in H1 2019.

Uganda Electricity Transmission Company Limited is seeking bids by 23 January for the design, supply and installation of the Kole-Gulu-Nebbi-Arua 132kV transmission line, related substations and the Kole switching station in north-west Uganda. The project is being funded from the World Bank’s Grid Expansion and Reinforcement Project. The tender is divided into three lots, and bidders may bid for one or several contracts. Work is expected to take 24 months.

Uganda plans to launch a second licensing round in May, offering relinquished areas and new acreage, notably in Lake Albert. Energy minister Irene Muloni told a press briefing during Africa Oil Week in Cape Town a technical team was working on demarcating the blocks in preparation for a launch at the East African Petroleum Conference in Mombasa in May. The blocks on offer will vary in size from 600km2 to 1,200km2, Muloni said. All have some 2D data, and some have 3D and well data.

KenolKobil announced an agreement with Delta Petroleum on 7 November to buy 23 service stations in Uganda and ten in Rwanda. On conclusion of the transaction, KenolKobil’s total retail network will rise to 433 stations, of which 200 are in Kenya. Kobil Uganda’s retail outlets will increase to 56 stations while Kobil Rwanda will have 61 stations under its control. The value of the transactions was not disclosed.

The 9.6MW Nkusi hydroelectric plant, part of the Global Energy Transfer Feed-in Tariff programme, began operating on 11 October. The $23m plant is located on the Nkusi River in Kibaale and Hoima districts, close to the Lower Nkusi hydroelectric facility and is expected to generate 46GWh/yr. It was developed and is owned by Norway’s PA Technical Services Ltd.

Ugandan developer Xsabo Group has launched construction of a 25MW solar park at Kabulasoke in the central district of Gomba. Vice-president Edward Ssekandi laid the first of the 68,000 modules in a ceremony on 3 October. President Yoweri Museveni is expected to commission the $24.5m project in November, with the Buganda King Ronald Mutebi expected to lay the last module. Xsabo Group plans to commission a total of 150MW of solar power around the country at a cost of $199m.

The Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) has called for a government guideline requiring at least 30% of the value of contracts to be reserved for local contractors to be applied in the oil industry. Acting PPDA executive director Benson Turamye told the Daily Monitor that the guideline already applied to procurement by government ministries, departments and agencies, but procurement tenders in the oil industry were not necessarily subjected to the same rules.

The Albertine Graben Refinery Consortium has given consortium member Saipem a contract for front-end engineering design work for the planned 60,000 b/d refinery at Hoima. The award follows the signing of a project framework agreement with the government in April. The consortium is made up of Saipem, Italian-based GE subsidiary Nuovo Pignone International, and two Mauritius-based companies, LionWorks Group and Yaatra Africa.

Tanzania Petroleum Development Corporation (TPDC) has invited expressions of interest (EoIs) from consultants to carry out a feasibility study for construction of a gas pipeline from Dar es Salaam to Uganda via Tanga, Mwanza and Kagera. The contract is expected to cover a market survey along the proposed pipeline route to establish current and future natural gas demand by identifying potential customers.

The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development is set to launch bidding in August for consulting services for its Wind Resource Map and Pilot Wind Power Development Programme. The programme, to be financed with a project preparation grant from the Strategic Climate Fund, through the African Development Bank, is one of the projects under the country’s Scaling Up Renewable Energy Programme.

The 5.4MW Lubilia Kawembe hydropower project in the Rwenzori Mountains of western Uganda was formally commissioned on 28 June. The project was developed under the global energy transfer feed-in tariff (Get FiT) facility, a dedicated support scheme for renewable energy projects managed by German development bank KfW in partnership with the government through the Electricity Regulatory Agency. The project is funded by the European Union Infrastructure Trust Fund and supported by the governments of Norway, Germany and the UK.

Uganda’s 183MW Isimba and 600MW Karuma dams are set for commissioning in October and December respectively, according to Uganda Electricity Generation Company chief executive Harrison Mutikanga, who visited the project sites in early June.He said repairs were under way at Isimba following an inspection by an independent panel of experts on dam safety, which highlighted inadequate instrumentation and cracking of the concrete structure.

Off-grid renewable energy and communications company Winch Energy and Mauritius-based internet service provider iWayAfrica on 11 June announced a partnership to launch the Winch Hub in Uganda. The project will use 20-feet-long containerised solar kiosks, called Winch Hubs, with an integrated very small aperture terminal (VSAT) – a satellite communications system – to provide energy services and broadband connectivity. “Around 80% of Uganda is unserved by reliable means of electricity, with around 65% of the population remaining without access to the internet,” Winch director Tom Wrigley said.