27
Sep

27th September 2021- The Minister of Infrastructure Honorable Claver Gatete conducted a 2 day visit to various infrastructure projects in the Northern and Western provinces. Among the electrical infrastructure development projects visited include; Camp Belge substation in Musanze district, Nyabihu Substation and its related transmission lines in Nyabihu district as well as Shema Power Lake Kivu, a methane gas to power plant construction project in Rubavu district.

Camp-Belge switching substation was recently upgraded to ensure reliability of power supply in the northern and western parts of the country. It has two outgoing feeders which are GISENYI and KINIGI feeders supplying Musanze, Gakenke, Nyabihu, Rubavu and Ngororero Districts as well as a small portion of Muhanga District. The old configuration of this substation needed to be modified to ensure reliability of power supply, enable connection of big industries in the area and also create a redundancy of power supply to all customers in northern and western region of Rwanda. 

Nyabihu Substation is a 40MW new substation constructed for Transmission Network strengthening in the northern region and western region. It will receive power from Giciye III hydropower plant and cut down the existing long Gisenyi feeder into three shorter feeders (Camp belge feeder, Rubavu Feeder and Ngororero Feeder) to and this will Minimize fault location duration and maintenance difficulties to restore power supply to REG customers in a short time. The substation will ensure reliable &unlimited evacuation  route for Hydropwer plants such as Giciye III  hydropower plant and other future planned Transmission evacuation of Nyabarongo II HPP. 

Shema Power Lake Kivu project is constructing a 56 MW gas methane power plant. On the day of the visit, the overall progress overwas at 60%. This is a methane gas project that is quite advanced with four floating barges, 19 generators installed and switchyard all completed.  The first 14 MW of electricity is expected to be commissioned in December 2021. The total plan to complete the entire plant of 56 MW in August 2022.

In order to evacuate electricity from the Shema plant, Rwanda Energy Group (REG) has constructed an electricity substation next to the plant which is expected to be completed in November 2021 ahead of initial commissioning. The project has created jobs for the local workforce and the community respectively. The team further inspected the road Bralirwa - Marine and access road to Lake Kivu Shema energy plant under construction by a Joint-Venture of Fair Construction company and a Chinese company (China State Corporation & Engineering Construction).  The road construction is completed except for two bridges which will be completed next month (October 2021).