2016 Low-water Season Ends

The GM writes to Consumer Associations

«Dear Chairpersons and Partners,

I wish to inform you that since last 20 June, we have shut down once and for all the Mape dam after that of Bamendjin, a few weeks earlier. The Sanaga intermediary catchment flow has exceeded the 920m3/s mark, thereby putting an end to flow rate regulation. Meanwhile, the contributions of Djerem at Mbakaou have equally exceeded the current stilling flow rate (350m3/s).

Thus, the low water period is considered ended on the South Interconnected Grid (SIG). Despite the 7 to 8% increase in demand (which translates into an additional need of 75 to 100 MW capacity per year) the supply/demand equilibrium has been maintained since the beginning of the year thanks to the combination of the following factors:

• The partial commissioning of the Lom Pangar dam, which made it possible, since the beginning of the low-water period in December 2015, for the Sanaga regulated flow to reach an average of 920 m3/second. In 2015, between May and June, the flow fluctuated between 500 and 600 m3/second. This year’s flow rate will enable the Songloulou and Edea power plants to generate about two times more energy than during the same period last year.
• Projects executed in the power plants aimed at increasing the availability of units (from 89.01% to 91.34% for hydro and from 52.35% to 66.26% for thermal). These efforts altogether generated additional 40 MW (+ 13 MW at the Limbe plant + 6MW at the Oyomabang plant + 20MW at the Edea plant and over 5 MW at the Bafoussam plant).
• Removal of Alucam: our customer has agreed to not consume 60MW out of the 190MW contractually expected from Eneo. A contribution that affords further flexibility to the system and guaranties capacity reserves.

It should be noted that during the 2015 low-water period, the power system witnessed 21 days of power outage during which blackouts affected customers’ activities.

Meanwhile, some localities are still experiencing power outages here and there due to incidents or planned work on the transmission and distribution networks. Most incidents are caused by the quality of wood poles, bad weather, vandalism, and overloaded transformers, which are in turn due to fraud or an ever-increasing demand. A network modernization plan needs to be initiated in order to resolve such incidents.”