Ruacana
The governments of Namibia and Germany have availed funds to construct a fourth turbine at the Ruacana hydropower plant.
This was said during the official visit to the plant last Friday by the German ambassador to Namibia who visited the turbine together with delegates from German’s largest bank, Kreditanstalt Fur Wiederausbau (KFW).
So far KFW spent at least N$350 million on Namibian turbines, including the construction of the three original ones. The Ruacana power station supplies 40 percent of electricity in Namibia.
German ambassador Christian Schlaga said it is important to have a running power station. He stated that his first official visit to the Ruacana hydropower plant was to make sure that the money assigned to the project was used as intended.
Schlaga said that he had to make sure of how the fourth turbine runs and that it was effective.
Dr Uwe Stoll, the director of KFW Bank in Namibia said his institution had partnered up with NamPower since 2010. He however said that the bank has been involved with the Namibian government since the 1990s.
Nampower’s Ruacana power station manager Ben Mingeli said that the advantage of the fourth turbine is that it uses the same amount of water in the range of other turbines, but it produces more water and electricity.
Mingeli noted that the Ruacana plant consists of five main components that include the Gove dam, which has been in existence since 1975, the Calueque dam, the diversion weir, the hydroelectric power station and the Omburu transmission line.
The Ruacana hydropower station is within the framework of German Development Cooperation, and the fourth turbine is one of many other projects of German-Namibian government partnership.