Ethiopia is set to export additional power to Sudan, Kenya and Djibouti in two years as installation of transmission lines to the neighboring countries is on progress, a top government officials said. In an exclusive interview with APA Bizuneh Tolcha, Public Relations and Communications Director with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Electricity said feasibility studies on export of additional power to Djibouti, Kenya and Sudan has been finalized while installation of transmission heading to Kenya is more than half completed.
As per their power purchase agreement between Ethiopia and Kenya, the former will export additional 400 megawatt of electricity to Kenya up on completion of 1045 km transmission lines that is under construction between the two neighboring nations.
“Installation of the 433 km transmission lines heading to Kenya is well on progress and more than 50 percent of the job has been completed. The 612km installation of transmission lines from the side of Kenya is also underway. The other remaining works are construction of substations and converters. The power export scheme will fully be practical before September 2019.” Bizuneh said
According to Ethiopia’s plan, the $900 million Ethio- Kenya power transmission lines will be extended to Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and Zambia which signed Memorandum of Understandings (MoU) to purchase power from Ethiopia.
“The amount of power export varies as change in seasons. Currently, we export up to 80 Megawatt of power to Djibouti, up to 100 megawatt to Sudan and 10 megawatt of electricity to small border towns in Kenya.” he continued
South Sudan and Somali land also signed power purchase agreement with Ethiopia which envisages increasing its power generating capacity from the current 4238 megawatt to 17000 megawatt per year by 2020.
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