AREVA’s Transmission and Distribution (T&D) division has been awarded a contract with Burkina Faso’s national utility, SONABEL, to build the country’s national dispatching center. The contract is part of a broader World Bank-financed project to interconnect the power grids of the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.

The new center will monitor the dispatch of electricity in Burkina Faso and will also be the key point of interconnection between the control center of the Ivory Coast and the existing regional control center located in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso).

This success will strengthen AREVA T&D’s position among the different partners of the Western African Power Pool (WAPP) project that will interconnect the grids of 13 countries in the region.

AREVA T&D will work in consortium with INEO, a subsidiary of the French Group Suez, that will be in charge of the installation part of the contract.

Laurent Demortier, Executive Vice President for AREVA T&D’s Automation Business Unit, said: “Thanks to AREVA T&D’s worldwide leadership in energy management systems, we are helping this part of Africa to optimally address its increasing electricity demand.”