ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA – The Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo) signed an agreement worth 210m euros with Vergnet Groupe, a French company, providing the former to generate electric power from Ashegoba Wind Power Project.

EEPCo General Manager Mhret Debebe and the president of the company, Marc Vergnet, signed the agreement here on Thursday [9 October].

Speaking at the signing ceremony, Minister of Mines and Energy Alemayehu Tegenu said the project has a capacity of generating 120 MW along with annual energy production of from 400 to 450 GWH. He said the government has been aggressively working to meet the ever growing energy demand in the country.

Activities are well in progress to make three electric power stations operational before 2009.

The project, the first of its kind in Ethiopia, has an implementation schedule of 36 months, the EEPCo general manager said. The first phase, yielding 30 MW capacity, will be commissioned in 16 months, he added.

The French minister of state for foreign trade, Anne-Marie Idrac, said the agreement will contribute a lot to further scale up the existing cooperation between the two countries.

Ashegoba Wind Power project is going to be one of the six generation projects currently under construction with an overall budget size of 3.1bn euros.

The feasibility study of the project was conducted by Lahmeyer International of Germany through close collaboration of GTZ.

The project is financed by AFD [expansion untraced] and one of the largest French banks, BNP Paribas, and is to be constructed by one of the leading French contractors, Vergnet.

Source: state-owned Ethiopian News Agency