Cameroon: Three Power Plants Financed By AFDB Near Completion

Cameroon’s national electricity, which supplies has been notoriously unreliable and subject to power cuts, is likely to improve in the coming months.

This is because three power projects being financed by the African Development Bank (AFDB) at the cost of $121.4 million from 2010-2011 are almost complete.
They will provide long-suffering Cameroonians with much more reliable electricity.

“Completion of work on transport lines, line maintenance and especially the replacement of wooden electricity transport poles with concrete poles are all part of the system improvements, whose goal is to increase the quality and reliability of public access to electricity.

“The Lom Panga storage reservoir project is complete, but the dam’s generating plant is still under construction. In the meantime, two other power plants, Kribi and Dibamba, have begun working to strengthen Cameroon’s generating capacity,” a statement copied to energynewsafrica.com indicated.

In November 2011, the African Development Bank awarded $62.9 million for the construction of Lom-Pangar, the hydroelectric generation’s ‘lungs’ in the country’s east region.

The project included the construction of a reservoir (6 billion cubic meters of water retained) for regulating the Sanaga’s flow and optimising generation during low water periods at the Song Loulou plant (335 MW) and the Edea plant (224 MW).

The production from these two plants has grown from 450 MW in 2011 to 729 MW now.

The statement noted that a 30-MW hydroelectric generating plant is also under construction at the base of the dam.

This is expected to be linked to the Bertoua thermal plant by a 105-km 90kV line that would start to work in May 2021 following the installation of an evacuation station and the construction of its four turbines.

The 216-MW capacity Kribi gas-fired generating plant began to work in 2013 after receiving $32.8 million from the African Development Bank in July 2011 for an expansion project. Its production goal is 330 MW.

Currently, the power plant has a 100-km 225 kV transport line connecting it with the Magombe substation in the Edea region in the country’s south region.
The plant operates with natural gas (with light fuel oil as emergency backup) from the Sagana South offshore gas field.

The Kribi gas-fired generating plant and the Dibamba generating plant provide access to electricity for close to half of Cameroon’s population.

The Dibamba heavy fuel oil generating plant was also designed to meet the serious problem of power cuts during the dry season. It was the first of the three plants to receive financial support from the African Development Bank of $25.6 million in April 2010. Built to mitigate the country’s shortage of electricity, high demand quickly outpaced its capacity the day after it began operations.

Located in the outskirts of Douala, Cameroon’s second largest city, Dibamba is an 86-MW thermal generating plant with a 2-km 90 kV transport line linked to the network serving the most remote and densely populated areas in the country’s west region.

With an estimated 23,000 MW hydroelectric production capacity, Cameroon has the second largest hydroelectric potential in Africa and the 18th largest worldwide. The country plans to complete the development of its hydroelectric industries by 2035. Construction of the Nachtigal hydroelectric generating plant began in 2019 and will be complete in about five years, with an estimated generating capacity of 420 MW.

The African Development Bank has awarded a funding package of $154.8 million for the completion of this generating plant. Other development partners, such as the World Bank, the European Investment Bank and Proparco, are also involved.

Source: www.energynewsafrica.com