The Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP)  has made two separate agreements worth US $200m with Chinese firms to see through the completion of the delayed Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project. According to the agreement which was signed between Abraham Belay (PhD), CEO of EEP, and Voith deputy, Tang Xu, the company has awarded Voith Hydro Shanghai Ltd, a Chinese firm based in Germany US $77.9m to supply and install six turbine generators for the Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project.

The Ethiopian Power company also signed an agreement worth US $125.6m with Power China construct the hydraulic steel structure component of the GERD. The firm will finalize the steel structure construction by the end of June, 2020, and will commission the entire project by the end of 2022.

The GERD project

The Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) is expected to produce 6,000-megawat which will be the centerpiece of Ethiopia’s bid to become Africa’s biggest power exporter.  GE Alstom, a US-French joint venture was previously awarded US $61m to install and commission the six turbine units. Two are expected to be finalized before 2020 to help early generation of 750MW.

So far, two companies have signed to install 11 turbine generators, each generating 400 megawatts of electricity. The electro-mechanical work in question was supposed to be done by Metal and Engineering Corporation (MetEC), the military-affiliated engineering complex. However, the Ethiopian government cancelled the contract with MetEC because the latter failed to make much progress, creating substantial delays of the project.

Source: Construction review online