The construction of the Lom Pangar-Bertoua transmission line in Cameroon, which is being carried out by the French engineering company known as Cegelec, is expected to be completed between November and December this year.
This was revealed by Théodore Nsangou, the managing director of the Electricity Development Corporation (EDC), a Cameroonian public company that operates in the field of electric energy, during a site visit, on the 16th of March this year.
The 105km transmission line that connects to the 30MW Lom Pangar dam power plant that is being developed on the Lom River, will be used to evacuate or rather supply the electricity generated by the power plant to 150 villages in the Eastern region of the Central African country.
First 7.5 megawatts of electricity
Earlier this year, in January, to be precise, Gaston Eloundou Essomba-the country’s Minister of Water and Energy, announced that the hydroelectric plant would inject the first 7.5 megawatts of electricity into the national grid from the start of 2022.
He said “In the next 12 months, it is expected that the first turbine at the Lom Pangar plant will be commissioned. This will improve the energy supply in the eastern region by injecting 7.5 MW of electricity to the national grid.”
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“The other three turbines will be gradually brought into service, so as to attain the project’s full capacity (30 MW) by June 2022,” he concluded.
Reduction of energy deficit in the Eastern region
The commissioning of the Lom Pangar-Bertoua transmission line and the partial operation of the Lom Pangar power plant will coincide with the interconnection of the East interconnected network (RIE) and the South interconnected network (RIS), owing to the construction of the 225 kV high voltage line between Yaoundé, the Cameroonian capital, and Abong-Mbang, in the east of the country.
This interconnection will allow the eastern region, which mainly supplied by thermal power stations, to benefit from the Songloulou and Edéa power plants, whose capacities officially increased by 150 MW since the impoundment of the Lom Pangar dam.
Coupled with the 30 MW of power expected from the Lom Pangar power plant, the interconnection of RIEs and RIS will allow the Eastern region to permanently reduce its energy deficit.
