Kivu 56 Power Station

Symbion Thermal Power Station is a 56 MW 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 is located at Cape Busororo, near Nyamyumba in Western Rwanda, approximately 163 km, by road, northwest of Kigali, the national capital and largest city in the country. This location lies approximately 20 km, 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 consists of two facilities: (a) an off-shore installation which extracts, separates and processes methane gas, which is dissolved in the deep waters of Lake Kivu, and then delivers it to (b) an on-shore generating facility located at Cape of Busororo, where the gas is used to turn gas turbines 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 3.6 MW Kibuye Power Plant 1, which is also owned by Symbion and is undergoing phased expansion to 50 MW.

Symbion Power has registered a Rwandan subsidiary company that it owns 100 percent by the name Shema Power Lake Kivu Methane Limited, to design, fund, build, own, operate and maintain the Kivu 56 Power Station. Four gas turbines, each rated at 16 megawatts, power the plant to produce 56 megawatts of clean energy.

Construction
According to the power purchase agreements signed between the relevant parties, the first 14 MW 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 106 MW. A total of US$370 million is budgeted to fulfill that goal.