Wärtsilä has signed a five year maintenance agreement covering 169.5 MW of power generation capacity at two Moroccan power plants. The plants are owned and operated by the Office National de l’Electricité et de l’Eau potable (ONEE), Morocco‘s public utility responsible for the production, transmission and distribution of electricity. The new agreement is a renewal of a previous five-year contract for the two power plants, located in Tan Tan and Dakhla, in southern Morocco, which both employ Wärtsilä 46 engines.
The scope of the agreement includes supply of spare parts, major overhauls, and full technical support. It will minimise the total cost of ownership of the plants, says Wärtsilä.
Operators value maintenance agreements because “they ensure the efficiency, reliability and availability of the power plants,” comments Patrick Borstner, Director, Operations Africa at Wärtsilä Energy.
The Tan Tan and Dakhla plants are expected to be used to balance renewable energy production with sustainable fuels. Morocco is utilising an increasingly large share of renewable energy, and the Wärtsilä engine technology can reach full output in a matter of minutes to balance the intermittent supply of renewables. Morocco also has an ambitious hydrogen development plan, and the Wärtsilä engines could be converted to operate on this fuel eventually.
Concrete plans for Nigeria
Meanwhile, in Nigeria, Wärtsilä reports the signature of a ten year operation and maintenance agreement for a captive power plant providing electricity to a new Nigerian cement producing facility. The cement plant is owned by Mangal Industries and located in Kogi State.
The power plant is critical to the facility’s cement production since the site is remotely located, with limited access to the electricity grid. It employs five Wärtsilä 34DF dual fuel engines delivering an output of 50 MW. The O&M agreement is designed to ensure that the facility can reliably maintain its cement production target of three million metric tons per year.
“We are reliant on the power plant for our operations…Not only will the agreement provide the assured reliability we need, but it also gives us cost predictability,” said Fahad Mangal, Managing Director, Mangal Industries Limited.
The ten-year agreement started immediately, with the facility commencing operation in Q2, 2024, running on liquid fuel initially. The facility will switch to natural gas operation when the natural gas pipeline is commissioned. The power plant’s dual-fuel engines can be operated both on liquid fuel and natural gas and could be converted to operate with future low- or zero-carbon fuels when they become available.
“Wärtsilä now has more than 400 MW of installed capacity for the cement industry in Nigeria, and we are operating three captive power plants in three different states,” commented Patrick Borstner, Director, Operations Africa at Wärtsilä Energy.
Nigeria is experiencing increasing demand for cement for its many infrastructure projects, and there has been a domestic supply gap. With this new plant, Mangal will partly address this issue.
