The Namibia Power Corporation (NamPower) is set to finalise financing and supplier agreements for the 40MW Otjikoto Biomass Power Station (OBPS) this week.
The OBPS project is estimated to have a 25-year lifespan.
The national electric power utility company is the project’s executing agency, which is being funded by the French Development Agency, the Mitigation Action Facility and the Government of Namibia.
“NamPower is signing financing and supplier agreements and an engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract with its financiers and suppliers for the planned 40MW Otjikoto Biomass Power Station Project,” the company said before Friday’s official ceremony.
This comes as the government has made a budget allocation of N$400 million for the development of the 40-megawatt (MW) Otjikoto Biomass Power Station, on the outskirts of Tsumeb in Oshikoto Region.
NamPower aims to add 150MW of power generation to the grid, to increase capacity.
According to the company, “the development of this project is a clear indication that NamPower is committed to supporting and achieving the Government objectives as set out in the National Planning Policies, the National Integrated Resource Plan (NIRP) and the fifth National Development Plan (NDP5)”.
The project fact sheet indicates that Namibia faces the challenge that its open savannah, characterised by a mixture of trees, bushes and extensive grass plains, is increasingly changing into a dense bushy landscape by the intrusion and intensification of aggressive and undesirable wooden plant growth, more commonly known as encroacher bush.
Encroachment affects more than 26 million hectares of land in Namibia. The study indicates that the imbalance in the proportion of grassland to bush leads to deteriorating biodiversity, a low carrying capacity of the farmland and a decrease in the recharge of Namibia’s aquifers.
“It is against this background that NamPower proposes to construct and operate the Otjikoto Biomass Power Station, which will generate electricity by the combustion of wood chips from encroacher bush harvested from the surrounding areas of the proposed project site.”
NamPower sources of power generation are the 120MW coal-fired Van Eck power station in Windhoek, the 24MW diesel-powered Paratus power station at Walvis Bay, and the 22.5MW ANIXAS diesel-powered station at Walvis Bay as well as the 332MW hydro-electric Ruacana Power Station in the Kunene River at Ruacana.
