Ghana’s new Minister for Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, on Tuesday, received a delegation from Sunon Asogli Power Ghana Ltd, Ghana’s largest independent power generation company at the Ministry of Energy.
The six-member delegation was led by Togbe Afede XIV, co-founder of the company and Chairman of Sunon Asogli Power Ghana Ltd, Mr Yang Qun.
The purpose of their visit was to formally welcome the new Energy Minister into the country’s energy sector and also brief him on the company’s profile and its operations in Ghana as well as its future plans.
Established in 2007 by Shenzhen Energy Group Co., Ltd, as a joint venture, Sunon Asogli Power has been a longstanding partner in delivering energy in the Republic of Ghana with its 560MW plant.
Currently, the company holds 15 percent market share of the total power generation transmitted onto the national grid.
Although the company has signed Take-or-Pay agreement with Ghana’s electricity off taker, ECG, the company has not invoiced the ECG for idle capacity charges since 2010 when it started operations.
Energynewsafrica.com understands that this idle capacity charges has accumulated to about $250 million. However, the company has no intension of asking ECG and, for that matter Ghana to pay this quantum of money.
Recently, Asogli announced plans to undertake phase III expansion of its current plant and the company is considering two options with the first option being an addition of 360MW while the second option will add 508MW.
It also plans to make huge investments in the area of wind, solar and waste-to-energy in line with the Government of Ghana’s agenda to increase renewable energy penetration in the country’s energy mix.
The sector Minister, who described these initiatives as interesting, assured Asogli of the Ministry of Energy’s preparedness to look into the company’s expansion plans and discussed the way forward accordingly.
Source:www.energynewsafrica.com
