"Huge work is being done in this country to end the problem," said Gamal al-Qaluibi, a power engineering professor at Cairo University. "In less than two years, the government managed to end electrical power shortages and even pave the road for surpluses."
When they are operating fully in 2018 as expected, the three electrical power plants, one in the central province of Beni Suef and the others in the new capital being built on the outskirts of Cairo, will produce 14,000 megawatts of electricity every year.
In 2013, Egypt produced 24,000 MW but 29,000 MW were needed to bring light to all households, make factory machines run, power equipment at hospitals and bring energy to farmland.
The government was actively asking the public to economize on electricity consumption, turn off air conditioning and do without half of the light bulbs at home. However, consumption rationalization did not reduce daily outages, which sometimes brought hospital equipment to a standstill.
Instead of addressing the problem, then-President Muhammad Morsi blamed his opponents for deliberately cutting electricity to anger the public.
When Abdel Fattah al-Sisi became president in mid-2014, he learnt the lesson from Morsi's failure to deal with the crisis. Sisi's plan to prevent the outages included the construction of eight massive power plants.
The three power plants that opened in March were designed and constructed by the German electronics manufacturing giant Siemens at the cost of $6.4 billion. Each of the plants will produce 4,800 MW of electricity annually at peak operations.
The plants are only a small item on Sisi's plan to achieve electricity sufficiency in Egypt, the Electricity Ministry said.
"Our plan includes a diversification of electricity sources," said Ayman Hamza, spokesman for the Electricity Ministry. "The plan aims to end electricity outages for good and secure needs for many years to come."
[upi.com]
20/3/17
No comments:
Post a Comment
Only News