President Akufo Addo has commissioned the Kpong Generating Station Retrofit project which has given 30 more year’s lifespan to the hydropower plant.
The project has guaranteed Ghana a reliable and efficient power supply in the next 30 years.
The President said the project is a manifestation of the government’s commitment and unwavering support to the energy sector. He acknowledged Former President Mahama led government for his contribution to the success of the project.
The Kpong Generating Station Retrofit project became necessary after generating components of the dam constructed in 1982 started recording unprecedented failures and forced outages owing to aging equipment which rendered critical parts of the dam obsolete.
A technical audit in 2006 recommended for retrofitting of the dam to avert complete breakdown.
Subsequently, the Government of Ghana secured a loan facility of €50million from Authority, Agence Française de Development (AFD), which was on-lent to Volta River Authority (VRA) to finance the retrofitting project. €42 .75 million was used for the project while € 3.65 million to finance a feasibility study for the future multipurpose project that will take care of power generation, irrigation, flood mitigation, water supply, and fisheries at Pwalugu. An additional loan facility of €12.5 million was secured through government from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to meet variation in the scope of work.
In July 2013, after an international competitive bidding process, Andritz Hydro-Austria was awarded the contract as engineering, procurement, and construction contractor, and Hatch Energy as the Owners for project implementation.
The contract covered the modernization of the entire hydropower station, design, manufacturing, supply, erection, and testing as well as the commissioning for the retrofit of electrical and mechanical equipment. This comprises generators and excitation equipment, turbine and auxiliary equipment, governors, generator transformer, powerhouse station service facilities as well as hydro-mechanical equipment.
The main objective for the rehabilitation of the Kpong hydropower plant is to ensure continuous supply, improve service delivery and increase sustainable power generation with stabilized energy security, and enhanced efficiency in the next three decades.
The Minister of Energy John Peter Amewu said the retrofit project has made the dam upgraded with modern state of the art components which cannot be found anywhere in any power generating facility in Ghana.
He said President Akufo-Addo’s leadership led to an end to dumsor adding that Ghana is now able to export 260MW of power as a result of excess power in a generation.
Source: Mybrytfmonline.com/Obed Ansah
