Global Trade and Development Consulting together with its Project Development Partner, Energy Ventures, both Maryland-based companies, today announced that they have been awarded the contract by the Ethiopian Ministry of Water and Energy and the Board of Directors of EEPCO, the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation, the state-owned electric utility in Ethiopia, to build, operate, and transfer three (3) , one hundred (100) megawatt solar sites, in the eastern region of Ethiopia. The site selection, due diligence and Feasibility Study, were completed earlier this year. That Feasibility Study has received both technical and financial approval from both the Federal Minister of Water and Energy and from EEPCo, without changes or modifications.
With Ethiopia identified in the initial set of President Obama’s “Power Africa” partner countries, these ambitious goals in electric power generation are making the utility and energy sector reforms needed to pave the way for investment and growth.
In addition to the needed power generation capacity, a key element of this 300 Megawatt Solar Project, is the economic development resulting in the creation of more than 2,000 construction jobs that would inject millions of dollars into the Ethiopian economy. Ongoing plant operations would additionally yield several hundred new jobs as well.
According to the Honorable Minister Alemayehu Tegenu, Minister of Water and Energy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, “This project represents a significant advance in our Ethiopian energy initiative and is now part of our comprehensive Energy Plan. Given Ethiopia’s large hydro-electric generation capacity and now wind and geothermal power generation coming on-line, large scale solar fits nicely into our energy portfolio and will provide significant power generation capacity much faster than the other renewable technologies. We welcome this project with open arms.”
“We spent many months analyzing the potential for a large-scale solar project in Ethiopia. What we found was Ethiopia has some of the highest solar irradiance factors in Africa”, said Dr. Yonnas Kefle, CEO of GTDC. As with all of our projects, we intend to also maximize the amount of local content and resources in performance of this project.”
“We are very excited to be the Project Developer leading this important project for the Ethiopia people. The power that this project will deliver will clearly have a dramatic effect on the Ethiopian people’s quality of life.”, said Mr. Lynn R. Hogg, Founder and CEO of Energy Ventures.
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Source: Global Trade and Development Corp. website, Nov. 7, 2013, titled “The Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo) approves 300 Megawatt Solar Project in partnership with two U.S. Firms”.
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