The Sinohydro Corporation Limited expected to deliver a 4MW mini power house at the Bui Hydroelectric dam site at a cost of US$790m. This was revealed by the Deputy Chief Engineer of the Chinese construction company Mr Fu Jien during a press briefing at the project site.
According to him the Bui Hydroelectric dam project is scheduled for completion by October this year bringing the total installation capacity of the Bui Power Station to 404MW. He further said that there will be an additional 4MW of power which will be used by the company and the Bui Power Authority (BPA) residence as plans to commission the generators at the main power station are underway.
In the meantime, the BPA will have to purchase power from the Ghana Grid Company (Gridco) to jump-start its generators at any shut down situations given that the mini power plant will provide similar services as well as cutting the extra expenditure.
However, the generating capacity of the Bui dam plant currently depends on the Ministry of Power demand as the plant is designed to play the complementary role of power generation from the Akosombo dam during the peak periods of between the 1600 hours and midnight.
The Bui Hydroelectric dam stands at generating between 80 to 220MW of power on a daily basis to boost the available power for easy load shedding activities which are currently underway in the country, though the water level at the dam is also a key factor for power generation which is currently at 171.07m above Sea Level (ASL) indicating a drop of 12m out of the maximum level of 183m.
The multi-million project will be located at the Black Volta River, in the Northern region which is expected to gulp about 10 to 20 years to complete. The project will be the second largest hydropower station in Ghana after the Akosombo Hydropower Dam which took 7years to complete.
