OREANDA-NEWS. April 20, 2016. Rolls-Royce has delivered 36 MTU Onsite Energy brand natural-gas-powered gensets for a gas power plant in Accra, Ghana. The Type 16V 4000 L32 gensets produce 1,560 kW of electric power and will feed 56 MW into the country’s public grid. The ‘VRA Tema Thermal Power Plant’ was built and is operated by the VPower Group, a world leader in decentralized power generation. The power plant is scheduled to go into operation from May 2016 and is expected to play a significant role in stabilizing the country’s power supply network. The high-speed gas engines will be serviced by MTU Asia in cooperation with MTU South Africa. MTU Onsite Energy is part of Rolls-Royce Power Systems.

Ghana suffers from a shortage of electric power and the Ghanaian Energy Commission has resolved to feed an extra 3,000 MW into the public grid by 2020. Major oil and gas fields have been under development since 2007 and since that time these two fuels have been the primary sources of energy within the country.

Andrea Nono, MTU South Africa, CEO, said: “Our gas-powered engines are particularly well-suited for distributed power plants such as those in Ghana. They offer rapid solutions that can be implemented in a relatively short time and are thus capable of helping to stabilize public power supplies.”

MTU Onsite Energy and VPower recently announced a strategic agreement that strengthened their partnership in power generation markets across China and the rest of Asia. Rorce Au-Yeung, VPower Group, Co-CEO, said: “The project in Ghana shows that our success as partners is not limited to Asia. Our system design and integration capabilities and MTU Onsite Energy’s gensets are a perfect match and allow us to offer our customers a fast and sound solution for their power needs.”