The China International Water & Electric Corporation (CWE) has won a $307m contract to design and build a 60 MW hydropower project in Ghana.
The contract, awarded by Ghana’s Ministry of Energy and Petroleum, sees CWE building a 34-m-high dam on the Pra River in Ghana’s western region, which is prone to power outages.
Construction of the Hemang plant, as it is called, is expected to take 42 months, CWE said in a statement.
"The signing of this contract marks CWE’s new firm step in the water and hydropower field in Ghana, which is of great significance to the country’s in-depth development of the Ghanian market and will help the company further enhance its international brand image," the statement said.
As well as the dam, the scheme involves CWE building a reservoir with a storage capacity of about 46 million cubic meters, and a 64-km-long 161 kV transmission line.
CWE is a wholly-owned subsidiary of China Three Gorges.
HydroWorld reported in September that CWE was one of seven groups pre-qualified to construct the 20-MW Vranduk hydropower plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The company’s other recent efforts in Africa include work on Cameroon’s 30-MW Lom Pangar and Uganda’s 188-MW Isimba Falls projects.
