Solar and battery power for a copper mine in Congo
Solar and battery power for a copper mine in Congo now flows through the night as well as the day. CrossBoundary Energy, a power developer, and Kamoa Copper, the company that runs the mine, finished building a 233 megawatt solar array paired with a 526 megawatt hour battery system at the Kamoa Kakula mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Megawatts measure how fast a plant can generate power at any moment, and megawatt hours measure how much energy a battery can store and release over time, so a battery this size can keep sending power out long after the sun goes down. The plant reached commercial operation, the point at which it starts selling power under contract, on 12 August 2026.
What the mine gets
Kamoa Copper signed the power purchase agreement, the contract setting the price and volume of electricity it agreed to buy, in April 2025. The plant now supplies a guaranteed 30 megawatts of continuous, round the clock power to the mine under that contract, built and switched on 16 months after signing. That speed matters for an industrial plant this size, according to Auguy Bakome, project manager at Kamoa Copper S.A.
The speed at which this project was delivered demonstrates how quickly renewable energy can be deployed at scale to support remote mining operations.
Auguy Bakome, project manager at Kamoa Copper S.A.. Source 3.
Already supplied is stated as more than 150 megawatts during early operation, the value plotted here, not a final total.
Show the numbers
| Solar capacity | 233 |
| Maximum expected output | 180 |
| Already supplied | 150 |
| Guaranteed to the mine | 30 |
Why the plant is bigger than the power it guarantees
The chart above shows why the plant is so much bigger than the power it guarantees. Much of what the panels generate goes into the battery instead of straight to the mine. In its first months running, the plant already supplied more than 150 megawatts at once, with 50 megawatts going directly to the mine network. The remaining 100 megawatts, a figure this article calculated by subtracting the direct supply from the total, charged the batteries instead. The maximum output the plant is expected to reach once fully ramped is 180 megawatts.
The batteries figure is this article calculation, subtracting the 50 megawatts sent directly to the mine from the more than 150 megawatts the plant had already supplied in early operation.
Show the numbers
| Direct to the mine | 50 |
| Charged into batteries | 100 |
| Maximum expected total | 180 |
Gracia Munganga, project development director at CrossBoundary Energy, said the milestone matters beyond this one mine.
Achieving this milestone with Kamoa Copper S.A. is a significant step to mainstreaming round the clock renewable power.
Gracia Munganga, project development director at CrossBoundary Energy. Source 2.
The guarantee behind it
The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, the World Bank Group arm that insures private investors in developing countries against political risk, backed the project with a guarantee of 237,000,000 dollars, for up to 15 years, according to its own filing on the project. Peak construction employed about 900 workers on a site covering about 163 hectares, connected by about 10 kilometers of overhead line to the mine.
Not the only plant on site
Ivanhoe Mines, the Canadian company that co owns Kamoa Copper, states in its own quarterly production release that this 233 megawatt plant is not the only one at the site. A second, similarly sized solar and battery facility already runs alongside it. The developer announcement about this project does not mention that second facility. The mine says it is also planning to double the site solar capacity again by the end of 2027.