Kivu 56 Power Station


Symbion Thermal Power Station is a proposed methane gas-fired thermal power plant located at the Cape of Busororo near the town of Nyamyumba in Rubavu District, in the Western Province of Rwanda.

Location

The power station will be located at Cape Busororo, near Nyamyumba in Western Rwanda, approximately, by road, northwest of Kigali, the national capital and largest city in the country. This location lies approximately, by road, south of Gisenyi, the provincial capital and nearest large town.

Overview

Kivu 56 Power Station is owned and operated by Symbion Power LLC, a private energy provider headquartered in the United States. The plant will consist of two facilities: an off-shore installation which will extract, separate and process methane gas, which is dissolved in the deep waters of Lake Kivu, and then deliver it to an on-shore generating facility located at Cape of Busororo, where the gas will be used to generate electricity.
Kivu 56 Power Station is the third methane gas powered power station in Rwanda, after KivuWatt Power Station, which generates 25 MW and is in the process of expanding capacity to 100 MW, and the Kibuye Power Plant 1, which is also owned by Symbion and is undergoing phased expansion to.

Construction

According to the power purchase agreements signed between the relevant parties, the first from this power station, are expected in 2018. In September 2017, Symbion sold US$100 million worth of equity in its two Rwandan projects; namely Kibuye Power Plant 1 and Kivu 56 Power Station. The money will be used to develop both power stations to generate a combined. A total of US$370 million is budgeted to fulfill that goal.