KEY POINTS
- Liberia restored its Mount Coffee turbine, reclaiming full 88-megawatt hydropower output this year.
- A new 20-megawatt solar farm boosted domestic power supply by an additional critical megawatts.
- LEC’s reduced imports could save Liberia tens of millions in annual electricity procurement costs.
Liberia is pulling back from regional electricity imports. The Liberia Electricity Corporation has begun reducing purchases from Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea after bringing a long-idle turbine back online and commissioning a new solar facility.
The Mount Coffee Hydropower Plant on the St. Paul River can now run at its full 88-megawatt capacity. A turbine that had been out of service for four years was repaired and returned to operation. That repair alone added 22 megawatts to the national grid.
Solar farm adds new muscle to national grid
A 20-megawatt solar farm, recently commissioned by President Joseph Boakai, pushed Liberia’s generation gains to a combined 42 megawatts. Information Minister Jerolinmek Matthew Piah confirmed the numbers at a briefing in Monrovia on Thursday.
“One of the damaged turbines has been restored, and the country is now receiving the full 88 megawatts from the hydropower plant,” Piah said. “In addition, there is the extra 20 megawatts from the solar farm that was recently dedicated by the President.”
That new capacity has allowed LEC to trim the volume of electricity it draws through the Côte d’Ivoire-Guinea-Liberia-Sierra Leone interconnection, a regional power-sharing grid known as the CLSG.
Reducing a costly import habit
Liberia joined the CLSG arrangement to shore up an electricity supply that domestic generation alone could not meet. The four-nation interconnection was established under a 2012 treaty and operates within the West African Power Pool framework.
By 2024, Liberia was importing roughly 35 megawatts through the CLSG line. That figure climbed to about 50 megawatts across 2024 and 2025. The annual cost of those imports ran between $20 million and $31 million, depending on regional wholesale prices.
LEC announced its turbine restoration plans in December 2025. The utility completed the repairs and commissioned the solar farm in the months that followed. Officials say reduced imports will cut energy costs and improve the reliability of Liberia’s domestic power supply.
