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Kigali - Rwanda has formally opened a unique methane power, which it is hoped will one day provide 60% of the country's electricity, according to its operator.
The generation station on Lake Kivu in Rwanda's west will also help reduce the risk of a potentially catastrophic natural disaster should the lake's vast quantities of methane and carbon dioxide be disturbed by an earthquake.
President Paul Kagame joined managers from the state-run Rwanda Energy Group (REG) for the opening ceremony of the $200m "KivuWatt" project, said REG manager Augusta Mutoni.
US-based power company ContourGlobal started construction of the plant located in Kibuye, close to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, after the government ran a successful pilot that produced about two megawatts of electricity from the methane in the lake.
The Kibuye plant has produced 26MW since December.
The pioneering new system uses a floating platform 13km off the shoreline that employs a vacuum to suck up methane from 300m below the waterline instead of using drilling as with traditional methane extraction projects.
Methane is then separated from water and carbon dioxide (Co2) and shipped to the shore via an underwater pipeline while excess CO2 is pumped back into the lake.
ContourGlobal hopes to build three more platforms at Kibuye by 2018 or 2019 which will increase the capacity of the "KivuWatt" project by 100MW, a major boost to Rwanda's current nationwide production capacity of just 160MW.
Lake Kivu, along with Cameroon's Lake Nyos and Lake Monoun, is one of three lakes in the world to have dangerously high concentrations of gasses like methane that if released suddenly could cause a disastrous explosion, after which waves of Co2 could suffocate people and livestock.
