Portfolio company
Empower |
|---|
Business sector | Infrastructure |
Market | Africa |
Investment status | Current portfolio |
Investment type | Project finance |
Date of original investment | 2002 |
Office | London, United Kingdom |
Empower was established in 2007 to provide an interim power generation service tailored to satisfy the needs of utility, mining and large industrial customers, using medium-speed diesel engines and generators. The concept, based on affordability and flexibility, aims to fill the gap between emergency generators and long-term projects. Empower provides electricity at a cost close to that of permanent Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO)-fired plants, but with the speed of deployment, contract length and opt-outs of other emergency generation providers.
Given the acute shortage of power in many developing countries in Africa and south Asia, Actis believes that Empower can quickly establish itself as a market leader, providing power at a lower cost than traditional emergency generation.
Empower has contracted to buy a fleet of containerised HFO-fired mobile generators, which may quickly and inexpensively be moved from project to project. Each generator set has a capacity of around 12MW. Medium-speed diesel engines, which are also used in ship propulsion, are ideally suited to continuous or near-continuous operation. Their robust construction combines high availability with the significant cost-savings of running on HFO, a relatively cheap by-product of the petroleum refining process. By comparison, most transportable power solutions on the market use high-speed, conventional diesel engines. These can only run on Light Fuel Oil (LFO), namely automotive diesel fuel, which currently costs twice as much as HFO. Given that fuel accounts for between 70% and 80% of the cost of any liquid-fuel power project, the potential savings obtained by using HFO are substantial.