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Grid Modernization for Transmission and Distribution Systems
Project
This project is carried out with the support of the European Union
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Project start date
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Project end date
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Project duration
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9 years
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AFD financing amount
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€ 25 000 000
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Global financing amount
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€ 29 100 000
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Country and region
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Location
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Phnom Penh
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Type of financing
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Partners
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European Union
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Beneficiaries
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Electricity of Cambodia
This project is carried out with the support of the European Union
The content of this project information sheet falls under the sole responsibility of the AFD and does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the European Union.
Cofinanced by Agence française de développement and the European Union, this project aims at upgrading Electricité du Cambodge’s monitoring and control systems, both for the national transmission grid and for the distribution network in the Phnom Penh region.
Context
The Royal Government of Cambodia made significant efforts over the recent years to accelerate energy access and to develop its power generation, transmission and distribution capacities at the national scale. In 2025, 99% of villages were connected to the grid, against 82% in 2018. Cambodia also increased installed capacities, with a growing share of renewable energies, and intends to keep on going into that direction.
Given the rapid economic growth of the country, which has been sustained at around 7% annually over the past decade, expanding and upgrading the power grid is indeed a key priority to meet the increasing demand and drive down prices, which are particularly high in rural areas. To address these needs, Cambodia, through its national public power utility Electricité du Cambodge (EDC), and with support from AFD and the EU, plans to carry out a comprehensive modernization of its transmission and distribution network management system and to build capacity in this field.
In more details, the main objective is to renew and upgrade the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems for the national transmission grid and for Phnom Penh region’s distribution network, which would allow greater coverage, reliability, and capacities to integrate intermittent renewable energies on the grid.
Description
The project aims at supporting EDC’s modernization, digital transfor-mation and improvement of its power transmission and distribution systems through 3 main components:
- Transmission and Distribution Systems: Upgrad-ing SCADA systems for the National Control Centre (NCC) and Phnom Penh Distribution Control Centre (DCC) (monitoring, telecommunications, automation and dispatching systems);
- Digital Transition: Technical assistance in the modernization of EDC’s IT system and asset man-agement scheme (digitalization roadmap, cybersecurity audit, process structuring and optimization);
- Training and Research: Capacity building through the creation of a master’s and PhD-level Research and Training Platform, in partnership between EDC, Institut Technologique du Cambodge (ITC), Insti-tute of Electrical Sciences (IES) and Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA), to support human capital formation in the field of power systems, and through the subsequent provision of specialized equipment (real-time simulator, laboratory equipment, training and testing tools) to the Cambodian members of the Platform: ITC and IES.
The project in financed by a 25 million euros of AFD sovereign loan and a 4.1 million euros EU grant, delegated to AFD for implementation through the EU Asian Investment Facility (AIF).
Impacts
The expected results of the project are the following:
- 30% reduction in the duration of power outages;
- 0.5% reduction of energy losses;
- Reduction in CO2 emissions, estimated at 12,000 metric tons of CO2 per year by 2025;
- Enhancing EDC’s network management, efficiency and renewable energy integration capabilities;
- 36 master's degree graduates and 5 PhD holders in the field of power systems
