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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sudan
Index
The only sizable area of the country having electric power
available to the public was the central region along the Blue
Nile from Khartoum south to Ad Damazin. The central region in the
early 1990s accounted for approximately 87 percent of Sudan's
total electricity consumption. The area was served by the
country's only major interconnected generating and distributing
system, the Blue Nile Grid. This system provided power to both
the towns and the irrigation projects in the area, including the
Gezira Scheme. Another small, local, interconnected system
furnished power in the eastern part of the country that included
Al Qadarif, Kassala, and Halfa al Jadidah. The remaining
customers were in fewer than twenty widely scattered towns having
local diesel-powered generating facilities: Shandi, Atbarah, and
Dunqulah in the north; Malakal, Juba, and Waw in the south; Al
Fashir and Nyala in Darfur; Al Ubayyid and Umm Ruwabah in
Kurdufan; a few towns along the White Nile south of Khartoum; and
Port Sudan. About fifty other urban centers in outlying regions,
each having populations of more than 5,000, still did not have a
public electricity supply in 1982, the latest year for which
statistical information was available. Rural electrification was
found only in some of the villages associated with the main
irrigation projects.
Approximately 75 percent of the country's total electric
power was produced by the Public Electricity and Water
Corporation (PEWC), a state enterprise. The remaining 25 percent
was generated for self-use by various industries including foodprocessing and sugar factories, textile mills, and the Port Sudan
refinery. Private and PEWC electricity generation increased about
50 percent in the 1980s, to an estimated 900 gigawatt hours in
1989 in attempts to counter frequent cuts in electric power. PEWC
also handled all regular electricity distribution to the public.
In 1989 PEWC power stations had a total generating capacity of
606 megawatts, of which about 53 percent was hydroelectric and
the remainder thermal.
The largest hydroelectric plant was at Roseires Dam on the
Blue Nile; it had a capacity of 250 megawatts. Other
hydroelectric stations were located at the Sennar Dam farther
downstream and at Khashm al Qirbah Dam on the Atbarah River; the
latter was part of the small power grid in the Al Qadarif-Kassala
area. The Sennar and Roseires dams were constructed originally to
provide irrigation, Sennar in 1925 and Roseires in 1966.
Electric-power generating facilities were added only when
increasing consumer demands had made them potentially viable
(Sennar in 1962 and Roseires in 1971), yet power generation in
Sudan has never satisfied actual needs.
The Blue Nile Grid, in addition to its Roseires and Sennar
hydroelectric plants, had thermal plants at Burri in eastern
Khartoum, where work on a 40-megawatt extension began in 1986,
and in Khartoum North, where a 60-megawatt thermal station began
operation in 1985. In the late 1980s, two additional stations
producing 40 to 60 megawatts each were under consideration for
Khartoum North.
The demand for electricity on the Blue Nile system increased
greatly in the late 1970s, and power shortages have been acute
from 1978 onward. Shortages have been blamed in part on
management inefficiency and lack of coordination between the PEWC
and irrigation authorities and other government agencies. Demand
continued to grow strongly during the 1980s as development
projects were completed and became operational and the population
of the Three Towns increased dramatically. New generating
facilities were completed in 1986 under the Power III Project,
almost doubling generating capacity in the Blue Nile Grid. The
project included work on the Roseires units, funded by IDA, and
on the Burri and Khartoum North installations, funded by the
British Overseas Development Administration. In 1983, recognizing
the need for more electricity the government began seeking
support for the Power IV Project to be funded by the World Bank,
the African Development Bank, and the Federal Republic of Germany
(West Germany) to bring the entire electrical system up to its
full generating capacity. The plan was later scaled back from the
initial cost of US$100 million and renamed Power V Project.
Data as of June 1991
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