Portuguese infrastructure group MCA has inaugurated Africa’s largest off-grid renewable energy solar park in Luau, Angola, marking a major milestone in the country’s rural electrification and clean energy transition efforts. Strategically located along the Lobito Corridor—an emerging transcontinental transport and trade route—the project is expected to play a key role in regional development and energy access.
The Luau Photovoltaic Park has a generation capacity of 31.85 MWp and battery storage of 75.26 MWh, enough to supply clean electricity to more than 90,000 people. The solar park is designed to operate entirely off-grid, eliminating the need for fossil fuels and preventing significant carbon emissions annually. Built at a cost of over €87 million, the facility includes 54,912 solar panels and is projected to save around 18 million litres of fuel each year.
The inauguration ceremony was attended by Angolan President João Lourenço and Minister of Energy and Water João Baptista Borges. With its commissioning, the Luau project surpasses the earlier benchmark set by MCA’s Cazombo Solar Photovoltaic Park, previously the continent’s largest off-grid installation in terms of solar capacity and battery storage.
The project has also generated more than 200 local jobs and forms part of Angola’s wider Rural Electrification Project, which aims to deploy 46 autonomous solar mini-grids across 60 communes by 2027, potentially benefiting over one million people.
Financing for the project was arranged by Standard Chartered Bank, backed by guarantees from German export credit agency Euler Hermes, with reinsurance support from Portugal’s COSEC and South Korea’s K Sure. Angola’s state-owned electricity producer PRODEL EP is the project developer.
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