Ivanhoe's Inga II hydropower deal lifts Kamoa-Kakula's clean-power supply toward 100MW

Ivanhoe Mines has completed the hydropower ramp-up of the refurbished 178MW Turbine #5 at the Inga II dam on the Congo River, with the first 50MW of clean electricity now flowing to its Kamoa-Kakula copper complex in the DRC's Lualaba province. The company says deliveries are on track to rise to 100MW in the first quarter of 2026, and eventually to 150MW once further grid upgrades are completed.

The power comes through a more than decade-long partnership between Ivanhoe Mines and Société Nationale d'Électricité (SNEL), the DRC's state power utility, aimed at restoring roughly 250MW of hydroelectric capacity at the ageing Inga facilities on the lower Congo River. Ivanhoe executive co-chair Robert Friedland and president and chief executive Marna Cloete said they were pleased that the first 50 megawatts of clean, hydroelectric power had reached operational status, calling it a milestone in the companies' long-running collaboration.

Grid bottlenecks, not generation, are the constraint

Turbine #5 itself is capable of feeding around 180MW into the DRC's national grid, but the amount that can actually reach Kamoa-Kakula, some 1,700 kilometres away in Kolwezi, depends on upgrades to the transmission network connecting Inga to the copperbelt. A first grid upgrade, involving resistor banks at the Inga substation, was completed in May 2025, and a static compensator at the Kolwezi substation is due for completion in early 2026, unlocking the increase to 100MW. Further filter bank upgrades planned for the first half of 2027 are expected to allow deliveries to reach the full 150MW target.

Diversifying Kamoa-Kakula's power mix

The Inga II supply complements power Kamoa-Kakula already draws from the DRC grid more broadly and from an on-site solar and battery-storage system, as Ivanhoe works to secure enough reliable electricity for the mine's expansion and its newly commissioned copper smelter. For the DRC, restoring Inga's hydropower capacity through mining-company investment offers a rare example of a mining company underwriting national grid infrastructure that also benefits other users connected to the same transmission lines — a model that could be repeated if the current phase of upgrades proves successful.

Sources

• Ivanhoe Mines: Ivanhoe Mines Announces Completion of Hydropower Ramp-Up of 178-megawatt Turbine #5 at Inga II, 25 Nov 2025

Photo: The Inga hydropower dam complex on the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Χρίστος Ιμμανοελ, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.