Tulu Moye Geothermal Power Station

The Tulu Moye Geothermal Power Station, is a 50 MW geothermal power station, under construction in Ethiopia. When fully developed, the power station will be the first grid-ready independently developed geothermal power station in the country. The developers of this power plant, plan to expand it to 150 megawatts in the second phase, planned for the following five years.

Location
The power station is located near the Tulu Moye Volcano, in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia, approximately 100 km, southeast of Addis Ababa, the capital and largest city in Ethiopia. The concession site comprises 588 km2.

Overview
The power station will be developed in phases. The first phase involves drilling of 12 holes, two of which are injection holes, while the remaining ten are production holes. The next infrastructure is the construction of a steam collection and injection system. The addition of a "water-cooled condensing steam plant" comes after that. Other infrastructure includes a 230kV electric switchyard and a 230kV transmission line to the Koka-Wakena substation, about 30 km, outside of Addis Ababa, where the energy will be injected into the national grid.

Developers
The power station is under development by Tulu Moye Geothermal Operations Private Limited Company (TMGO), a special-purpose company registered in Ethiopia. In turn, TMGO is 100 percent owned by Tulu Moye SAS, a company registered in France, whose shareholding is illustrated in the table below.

Funding
The cost of construction of the first phase of this infrastructure project (the first 50 megawatts) is budgeted at US$260 million, borne by the developers; 25 percent as equity and 75 percent as debt.

Construction
In October 2019, the drilling contract was awarded to Kenya Electricity Generating Company (Kengen), a company from neighboring Kenya. The drilling contract price is quoted as US$52 million for eight wells; at $6.5 million per geothermal well.