Shenzhen Energy Group (SEG), the mother company of Sunon Asogli — an Independent Power Producer in Ghana’s power sub-sector, has announced it is to build a 700MW power plant in the country.
Mr Hong Can, a director at Shenzhen Energy Group, indicated that the coal-fired power plant will take 24-30 months to complete and also include the construction of a coal-port with approximately 50,000 tonnes berth. The project is projected to cost about $700 million and will need 2 million tonnes of coal per year to run when completed. According to Mr. Can, the coal for the project will be imported from South Africa.
These disclosures were made when Mr Can and Sunon-Asogli officials paid a working visit to Ghana’s Energy Minister, Mr Emmanuel Buah. Using its partnership with Ghanaian joint venture Sunon-Asogli, the company has already built a 200MW diesel-powered plant in Ghana.
Touching on the intended 700MW project, SEG also stated that desulfurisation and electrostatic precipitator devices and technologies will be employed to increase the efficiency of the plant and minimise environmental pollution to the barest minimum.
SEG, which already operates different thermal plants of a total installed generation capacity of 8,106MW — with coal-fired plants constituting about 3700MW, has decided to embark on this project because coal as a fuel is cheap, abundant, widely-used, efficient, and safe; and there are modern technologies to minimise environmental pollution.
Emmanuel Buah was grateful to the Shenzhen Energy Group for its continuous interest in Ghana’s energy sector and welcomed the current proposal.
He indicated that Ghana has a target of increasing its current installed generation capacity of about 2,500MW to 5,000MW by 2016, and the proposal of SEG with its vast experience in building and operating power plants could not have come at a better time.
Mr Buah also indicated that the proposed project looks exciting, especially as it will be fired by coal which is a cheaper fuel compared to gas and light crude oil. This, in his opinion, will translate to cheaper energy cost for both industries and households.
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