Gibe III generating 500 MW of electricity into nat’l grid

Addis Ababa, March 30, 2016 (FBC) – Ethiopia’s second biggest hydroelectric power plant, the 1, 870 MW Gibe III Hydro project, which was commissioned this year, has started test trials and is generating 500 MW of electricity into the national grid, an official has said.

This brings Ethiopia one step closer to solving power shortages, which the government has blamed on drought conditions.

The biggest hydro-electric generator by far will be the 6,000 MW plant on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile river where construction began in April 2011 and is halfway complete, according to the Ethiopian government.

Engineer Azeb Asnake, CEO of the Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP), said five of Gibe III’s ten turbines have started generating power.

The ten turbines each have generating capacity of 187MW, although current drought conditions means the five operational turbines aren’t producing their maximum capacity.

The Ethiopian government’s ambitious five-year development plan called the second Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP-II) 2015-2020 envisages increasing electricity generation capacity from the current 4, 400 MW to 17 300 MW to power the country’s economic growth.

Most of this will be generated by hydro plants, though geothermal, solar, waste and wind power are also part of the mix.