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Sudan
Electric Power
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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