Ethiopian national utility and Reykjavik Geothermal in PPA negotiations
Aluto Langano Geothermal Power Plant (source: bgr.bund.de)
Alexander Richter
6 May 2014
Following a signed MOU, Ethiopian Electric Services Enterprise (Eepco) and Reykjavik Geothermal, as developer of the Corbetti geothermal project, have now start negotiations on a PPA for up to 1,000 MW of capacity.
Announced last week, Reykjavik Geothermal (RG) and the Ethiopian Electric Services Enterprise (Eepco) have now started negotiations on a power purchasing agreement in Addis Ababa, announced through MOU last year.
Reported by AllAfrica, negotiations – so the news – “include power sale, tariff, investment guarantee and foreign currency exchange rates. “Technical issues should be addressed before we commence work on the project.”
The negotiation is expected to take longer as it is highly technical in its nature. If everything goes according to plan, the company will start mobilization to commence with preparation for drilling by September 2014.
Reykjavik Geothermal signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Ethiopia in September, 2013. And, subsequently, the project and its plan to generate electricity from geothermal energy with an installed generation capacity of 1000 MW was made public.
The project is located in the Oromia Regional State near the town of Shashemene around the Corbetti locality with an expected investment volume of $4 billion. The investment would mean the geothermal project would by far the largest FDI in Ethiopia to date.
Reykjavik Geothermal will work with its local partner, Rift Valley Geothermal (RVG,) established by Nejib Abbabiya, an Ethiopian born Canadian businessman in 2009. The partnership between the two was formed in 2011.”
Source: All Africa
