Improving access to electricity by constructing a photovoltaic power plant

The Niger River area, which includes the urban community of Niamey and the regions of Dosso and Tillabéry, alone accounts for 70% of electricity demand. Despite the commissioning of the Gorou Banda thermal power plant (80 MW which can be extended to 100 MW), the untimely outages continue to place a strain on the country’s economy. This is in particular due to the instability of Nigeria’s interconnected grid and extreme weather conditions which damage the equipment.

In the near future, the Government of Niger wants to diversify its power generation mix and reduce its dependence on energy imports. It also wants to improve the competitiveness of its energy mix by reducing spending on hydrocarbons.

The project aims to create an additional power generation capacity in order to promote the economic and social development of Niger. Achieving this objective involves:

• Improving and securing the electricity supply of the city of Niamey at the lowest possible cost by reducing dependence on imports 
• Developing the country’s substantial renewable energy potential by providing a sustainable and modular solution that limits the greenhouse gas emissions of the energy mix.
• More specifically, the project provides for:
• The construction of a 20 MW photovoltaic power plant, support for the operation and maintenance of this facility for two years, and the connection to the transformer substation of the Gorou Banda plateau
• Assistance to the contracting authority and institutional support. The objective: assist and train engineers and technicians in Niger in photovoltaic technologies so that they can operate large-scale solar power plants themselves in the short term.

The project will improve living conditions for some 18,000 customers and allow the annual generation of 34 GWh of renewable electricity. It will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 23 tons of CO2 a year.