Five amazing things you need to know about Mauritius, the country that generates electricity with sugarcane

Sugarcane is the main cash crop produced in the country.

The island has deemed it wise to use the cash crop together with other renewable resources such as solar, wind and hydropower to produce electricity to run its daily affairs.

Within the African continent, many countries use fossil fuels to produce electricity.

The limited supply of these sources of energy has spurred a few countries to look for alternatives that will ensure an uninterrupted supply of electricity.

This island nation has realized the menace of the high dependence on fossil fuels and has therefore found another alternative to produce electricity.

According to the country’s deputy prime minister, Ivan Collendavelloo the government’s goal is to increase the share of renewable energy in the energy mix to 35 per cent by 2025, adding that, “Independent producers in the sugar industry will continue to provide the largest share of renewable electricity.”

These are five amazing things about how the production is done

• Dried and crushed sugarcane byproducts, which account for 14 per cent of the electricity, is burned to produce energy through thermal power plants during the harvest season which starts in November

• Four sugar companies on the island produce about 60 per cent of the nation’s electricity using their own thermal power stations that also run on coal when there is no supply of sugarcane byproducts at the end of the harvest season.

• The sugarcane is unloaded into a warehouse and 8,500 tonnes of sugarcane a day (900,000 tonnes yearly) are sent to the power facilities for processing.

• The sugarcane is crushed to extract juice for sugar processing. It is then soaked to extract all the juice and heated to dry before being squashed.

• The dried leftover is burned at the thermal power stations at 500 degrees Celsius to fuel turbines that produce electricity for the company and the national grid.