His Excellency Julius Maada Bio, President of Sierra Leone, inspects Sunbird Bioenergy’s renewable energy project that is located in the Bombali District of Sierra Leone. President Maada Bio Inspects Sunbird’s Renewable Energy Project. COO, Subhash Abeywickrama welcomed the delegation and provided a detailed tour, starting with the control centre. The President was able to witness first hand that Sunbird Bioenergy has the capacity to export 32MW of renewable power into the na

Subhash Abeywickrama, COO of Sunbird Bioenergy Sierra Leone, discusses the supply of 32 MW of renewable power to the government of Sierra Leone. Interview by @BBCAfrica correspondent Zawadi Mudibo @zawadimudibo. Zawadi Mudibo introduces the problems faced by businesses in Sierra Leone due to the rationing of power. The country only has 99.6MW of installed capacity to support a population 7 million people, and currently only 15% of the population have access to power. Even wor

To ensure a sustainable supply of feedstock for the factory and to deliver our rural development objectives, Sunbird Bioenergy Sierra Leone has contracted Vana Global (“Vana”) to develop an out-grower program that will engage local small-scale farmers in along the Makeni-Lunsar axis. Vana was founded with the aim of reinventing agriculture for the 21st century to end the hardship that small-scale African farmers continue to face. Vana uses a combination of global financing an

During the 2017 trials of the 32 MW biomass power plant at the Sunbird Bioenergy Mabiifu project site, it was established that the local wild napier grass (colloquially elephant grass, or scientifically Pennisetum purpureum) is an excellent alternative biomass feedstock to bagasse. Since then, the agronomy team have been working to introduce napier grass as a commercial and sustainable crop on the estate. The first phase is to establish a nursery to cultivate the seeds and mo

Sunbird Bioenergy (SL) has successfully completed a series of trials to test the suitability of locally sourced sustainable biomass feedstock to produce power in the company’s 32 MW power plant. The boilers were originally designed for bagasse, but in order to extend the power production beyond the sugarcane harvesting season, the company has tested other sustainable feedstock including; napier grass, wood chips, palm kernel shells and rice husks. Napier grass proved to be an