The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) has signed an agreement with US-based energy developer SolarReserve and Saudi Arabia-based ACWA Power, to develop the Redstone Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) project in Northern Cape, South Africa.

The Redstone project is a 100 megawatt (MW) clean energy facility that will be connected to the South African national grid.

OPIC has committed $400m of debt financing to support the development of the energy facility.

Elizabeth Littlefield, OPIC’s President and CEO, said: “The development of the Redstone project will benefit the South African people, the international clean energy sector, and the role of US leadership in emerging market development.”

“It’s impressive that Redstone brings together the innovative US private sector leadership and technology of SolarReserve, the international experience of ACWA Power, and large-scale catalytic financing from OPIC. This sort of change-making partnership is at the heart of President Obama’s Power Africa initiative and creates broad, lasting impact in international development,” she said.

Using SolarReserve’s CSP technology, Redstone’s molten salt storage capability will deliver consistent baseload electricity, even after the sunsets.

This is a critical development in a country where frequent power outages have been cited as an obstacle to economic growth.

“The Redstone project marks an important technology advancement for Africa in clean, renewable power, and a demonstration of US developed technology that is leading the world in large scale solar energy storage,” said SolarReserve’s CEO Kevin Smith.

“In addition, the project’s delivered electricity price is the lowest of any CSP project in the country to date. We appreciate OPIC’s support and look forward to working with our partner ACWA Power and the communities where the project is located to help South Africa at a time when it critically needs new generation to support growth of its economy,” he said.

The Redstone CSP Project is ACWA Power’s second project in South Africa, according to Paddy Padmanathan, President and CEO of ACWA Power.

“Quite apart from the socio-economic contribution this project will make to South Africa, the first time deployment of CSP Tower technology in the country using a project finance framework, which was made possible by the galvanizing leadership of OPIC financing, will enable this very important clean energy technology to be deployed at scale and at a faster pace than otherwise would have been possible,” he said.