General Electric and its consortium partners Endeavor Energy (Endeavor), Eranove and Sage Petroleum, have signed an agreement with Excelerate Energy (Excelerate), a leading provider of floating storage regasification units (FSRU), for the reservation of an FSRU that will provide storage and regasification of liquefied natural gas (LNG) for the Ghana 1000 project, a 1300MW power plant that will be located in Aboadze in the Western Region of Ghana.

“Partnering with Excelerate Energy illustrates the remarkable progress made by the Ghana 1000 consortium in completing the project on time to deliver power to the people of Ghana,” said Leslie Nelson, GE Ghana CEO. ”We’re partnering with the right stakeholders to offer innovative solutions that will ultimately reduce the cost of power to the final consumer.”

The first phase of the Ghana 1000 project is expected to be completed in late 2016 and will add 125MW to the grid. This will increase to 750MW by 2018 and 1300MW within five years. The Ghanaian government is committed to creating an enabling environment and regulatory frameworks that will help the project sponsors add power quickly to the national grid.

“We’re very delighted to be part of this historic project, which represents significant contributions to Ghana’s energy sector,” said Excelerate spokesperson Marshal Carpenter.

 “As a co-lead on this project, Endeavor Energy is proud of the commitment of all partners to ensure that we successfully deliver not only what will be Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest power park but also lower energy costs while increasing the reliability of power supply in the country,” said Endeavor CEO Sean Long. “Ghana 1000 promises to be the first of its kind project in Africa.”

Ghana 1000’s FSRU will have additional capacity to allow other power generators to shift from light crude oil to LNG for power generation, which could save Ghana up to $1 billion per year.Excelerate has capabilities to regasify 500 million standard cubic feet of LNG, enough gas to power approximately 3,000 MW.