German company Voith Hydro has been selected to rehabilitate the 65 MW Nangbeto hydroelectric power plant. The operation will require an investment of $25 million.
The Benin Electric Council (BEC), an international organisation jointly owned by the governments of Benin and Togo, has decided to rehabilitate the Nangbeto hydroelectric plant. It is located in the south of Togo, with a production capacity of 65 MW. The Canadian company Voith Hydro was chosen to carry out this rehabilitation project.
It is expected to rehabilitate all generators, inspect the turbines and rehabilitate the cooling system. The company will start by shutting down a generator, restarting it after work, before doing the same work on the second one. The objective is for the facility to continue to provide energy to the Togolese and Beninese populations. The cost of this operation is $25 million. Voith Hydro has until 2022 to deliver the project.
The Nangbeto hydroelectric power plant
“This project and the successful cooperation with our local partners provide us with a good basis for further modernisation work in Central and West Africa,” said Heike Bergmann, Deputy Director of African Sales at Voith Hydro. The Benin Electricity Council, which is responsible for this work, commissioned the Nangbeto hydroelectric power plant in 1988. The energy it produces is sold to Togo Électricité, the public company responsible for electricity distribution, and to its sister company, the Beninese Electric Power Corporation, as well as to the Togolese Phosphates Agency. Its dam was built on Mano, a river with a rather irregular course. This dam is also used to irrigate fields in several localities in southern Benin and Togo.
Unlike the design of hydroelectric projects, the other objective of the project was to create fishing zones, thanks to the reservoir that collects up to 1.7 billion m3 of water. Thus, 1000 to 1500 tons of fish would be produced each year and 43,000 hectares of land would be irrigated by the dam. The construction of this infrastructure cost more than $98 million. The financing was provided by the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB).
Jean Marie Takouleu
