Lekela's 158-MW wind farm in Senegal starts feeding power

West Africa’s first utility-scale wind farm -- the 158.7-MW Parc Eolien Taiba N’Diaye in Senegal -- has been tied to the national power grid, developer Lekela said on Thursday.

The first power has been exported to the grid 10 months after the project's construction was launched. Turbine installation at the site in the Taiba N’Diaye area, about 90 km northwest of the capital Dakar, is still ongoing and the last ones of all 46 Vestas machines will be erected by the end of the year. The substation for the power plant has already been put on stream, Lekela said.

Once fully operational in 2020, Parc Eolien Taiba N’Diaye will lift Senegal’s power generation capacity by 15%. It is expected to produce more than 450,000 MWh of electricity annually.

Lekela is 60%-owned by Actis and 40% by a group led by Mainstream Renewable Power, with investors such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Recently, the company achieved financial close on a 250-MW wind project in Egypt and now has more than 1 GW of wind turbine capacity in operation or under construction.

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