Cameroon: £22 Million Investment to Strengthen, Power Supply with 25 MW Solar Projects

By Abdul Rahman Suagibu –

Solar Plant
Photo Credit: Oliytech Solar

NEW AFRICA DAILY NEWS, Freetown, Sierra Leone- Cameroon Power Utility Energy of Cameroon S.A. (Eneo) has signed a memorandum of understanding with Norwegian solar developer Scatec Solar for the construction of two PV plants with a total installed generation capacity of 25 MW.

The utility disclosed in a press release, a 10 MW project will be located in Guider in the North Region of Cameroon and another 15 MW facility is arranged for Maroua in the North region. The two projects, is to be commissioned at a certain date in 2020, are expected to require an investment of 22 Million Pounds. The facilities, which will sell electricity to Eneo under a long – term power purchase agreement, are geared towards revamping the power supply in the North Interconnected Grid by generating 49 GWh per year at a “competitive price”.

A first memorandum of understanding, to set out the terms of the projects’ structure, was signed in May 2016 by Eneo and the Scatex consortium, which also includes Izuba Energy and Sphinx Energy. In October 2017, the Ministry of Energy and Water Resources helped the Eneo tender for the two projects.

Eneo – is 51% owned by London – based investment firm Actis, 44% by the state of Cameroon and 5% by employees owns and operates 968 MW of power generation assets, of which around 74% are represented by hydropower plants. Those assets include 13 grid power plants and 26 remote thermal power plants.

Cameroon has a total installed generation capacity of around 1.3 GW and a population of 24 million people. The government has paid much attention on expending power generation in non-interconnected areas. From to the International Renewable Energy Agency, the country’s total installed PV capacity at the end of 2018 was just 14 MW and consisted mostly of distributed generation projects. Only 48% of Cameroon’s population has access to power.

For New Africa Daily News Abdul Rahman Suagibu Reports,  Africa Correspondent

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