During a recent special plenary session of the national assembly of Cameroon, Gaston Eloundou Essomba, the Minister of Water and Energy (MINEE) gave an update on the ongoing 225 kV Memve’ele hydropower plant project where he mentioned that the construction of the Nyabizan-Yaoundé electricity transmission line will be completed in September this year (2021).
Essomba explained that only 5 kilometers out of the 270-kilometer line were yet to be built. When fully completed, the line will help the West African state to save a substantial amount of money that is currently used in the procurement of fuel.
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Two years ago, the MINEE reported close to US$ 50M in revenue from April 2019, when the Memve’ele plant was commissioned, to September 2020. This was a combination of fuel costs saved due to the suspension of operations at the Ahala, Oyom Abang, and Mbalmayo thermal power, and the income the government generated from the operation of the Memve’ele dam through the Electricity Development Corporation (EDC) of Cameroon for water rights.
Memve’ele hydropower plant overview
Located in Nyabizan on the Ntem River in the South region of Cameroon, approximately 300 km from Yaounde, the Memve’ele Hydroelectric power plant is one of the biggest in the West African country.
Its Earth fill dam is 20 meters high with a reservoir of 19 million m3 of water that is channeled through a canal to the powerhouse for the production of energy. Other features of the dam include a headrace channel, intake tower, secondary dam, a living camp for the plant stuff, homogeneous earth dam, tailrace tunnel, and tailrace outlet.
Expected to provide sufficient energy to resolve the electricity deficit in the southern part of Cameroon, the Memve’ele Hydroelectric power plant is built by the Chinese civil engineering construction company Synohydro.
The entire project is co-financed by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Cameroon government, and the Exim Bank of China.
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