Electrical transmission, engineering and maintenance provider Omexom, a subsidiary of Italian energy company VINCI Energies, has won the Société d’Electricité du Sénégal (Senelec) contract to install five new extra-high-voltage (EHV) transformer stations, nearly 200 km of overhead and underground EHV transmission lines and over 100 distribution substations in various parts of the country, as well as a regional load dispatch centre.

The project is part of Senelec’s transmission and distribution grid expansion, reinforcement and reliability enhancement programme, which forms part of the entity’s 2016–2020 Strategic Plan.

The €197-million project will take 36 months to complete and involves the cities of Dakar, Diass, Diamniadio, Thiès, Kounoune, Tobène and Tambacounda.

The contract is fully financed by a banking pool made up of French and Senegalese lenders and is backed by the French authorities through a BPI Assurance Export guarantee and the Senegalese authorities through a Ministry of Economy, Finance and Planning guarantee.

The project will enhance the reliability of the Senegalese electricity grid. In Dakar, it will give the strategic city, including the central neighbourhoods, three new sources of electricity supply.

An EHV transformer station will be built to secure power supply in the new suburb of Diamniadio. A second transformer station will be installed in the city of Thiès to secure the electricity supply of several towns in the vicinity. Lastly, the contract covers reinforcement of the distribution grids in Dakar, Tambacounda, Kounoune, Diamniadio and Thiès.

Access to electricity is a key economic and social development goal in Senegal, where VINCI Energies is increasingly expanding the business activity of its Senegalese subsidiary by transferring expertise from its Moroccan and French subsidiaries.

Last year, the business unit was awarded the contract to build solar photovoltaic
power plants with combined capacity of 17 MW. It is currently carrying out electrical works at the 21 MW Kahone solar power plant.

VINCI Energies is stepping up its business activities in Senegal as part of its increasing engagement in Africa, where it notably participated in Morocco’s major electricity transmission and rural electrification programme and recently inaugurated West Africa’s largest (33 MW) solar farm in Zagtouli, on the outskirts of Ouagadougou, in Burkina Faso.