Sahatona HPP — 1.6 MW in the rice belt

1 The project

Sahatona sits in Alaotra-Mangoro, Madagascar’s rice belt. It is a run-of-river development: the plant uses the natural flow and head of the river, returns the water to the watercourse after generation, and operates without a large storage reservoir.

Commissioned in 2022, it marked a step change for HIER — the Madagascar partner of the alliance, which had spent more than a decade building village-scale and small regional plants. Sahatona was HIER’s first plant above 1 MW, and the first built to a utility-scale standard: larger electromechanical equipment, a formal control and protection scheme, and a grid-quality supply for productive users, not only households.

2 Scope of supply

The consortium’s scope covered the electromechanical heart of the plant, delivered as one package so that the equipment arrived together with its engineering, its installation supervision and its commissioning team.

• Turbine-generator unit — manufactured at the alliance’s Zhangjiajie base and delivered as a matched set with the plant’s hydraulic conditions.
• Control and protection equipment — governor, excitation, switchgear and protection, engineered as one system rather than sourced piece by piece.
• Installation and commissioning — carried out by the consortium’s teams on site, up to handover to the operator.
• Operation — the plant is operated by HIER, which has developed, built and operated hydro plants in Madagascar since 2008.

3 What the plant powers

Sahatona supplies around 1,500 households, and — the reason this plant matters beyond its capacity figure — it powers rice mills and irrigation pumps in one of Madagascar’s most productive agricultural regions.

That mix changes what the plant has to do. Household demand peaks in the evening; milling and pumping are daytime loads. A plant serving both must hold voltage and frequency across a wide, shifting load curve — which is precisely what a properly engineered control and protection package is for.

4 Why it matters

Sahatona proved that the delivery model HIER had refined on small plants — local execution, local operation, equipment engineered for the site — scales past the megawatt line. It is the direct template for the six projects totalling 28 MW+ now under construction, where TC is lead equipment supplier and first power is expected in 2026.