Cameroon’s Minister of Water and Energy, Gaston Eloundou Essomba, officially inaugurated the 36 mwp Maroua and Gudier solar photovoltaic power plants on September 22, 2023. The facilities, which have been in service for several months, serve the northern part of Cameroon.
Release by Scatec, a subsidiary of Norwegian independent power producer (IPP) Scatec, delivered the pre-assembled system under a lease agreement signed with Eneo, Cameroon’s public electricity utility. The two plants are equipped with more than 44,800 bifacial solar panels mounted on trackers, “which will maximise energy production throughout the day. The plants will produce 80 GWh of electricity a year. We’re proud to say that our fight against climate change will be obvious, as the plants will make a significant contribution to reducing CO2 emissions, with an estimated saving of almost 60,000 metric tonnes a year,” says Scatec.
According to Eneo, the two plants will start injecting electricity into the northern interconnected grid (RIN) at the end of 2022. According to Minister Gaston Eloundou Essomba, the commissioning of these facilities “will substantially improve the quality of the public service in the northern part of the country, which was previously subject to drastic drops in production from the Lagdo dam (72 MW, editor’s note), due to hydrological problems”.
What’s more, “these solar power plants mean that the thermal power plants previously used to boost production in this part of the country will be shut down, generating budget savings for the state,”, explains Cameroon’s Minister of Water and Energy. These are the first large-scale photovoltaic solar energy production facilities.
The Maroua and Guider solar power facilities generate electricity and supply it to Eneo, the public utility company, primarily owned by Actis, a British investment firm. Maroua Guider Solar Company reportedly invested approximately €26 million, equivalent to CFA 17 billion. Both projects received an €11 million guarantee from BGFI Bank, a banking group headquartered in Libreville, Gabon.
