Ministry Endeavoring To Attain GTP In Energy Sector

The Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy said it is exerting maximum efforts to achieve the target set in the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) in the energy sector, WIC reported.

The five-year GTP, which will be concluded by 2015, eyes increasing the electricity generation capacity of the country to 10, 000 MW and its coverage to 75 per cent.

Wide-ranging activities have been carried out during the past three years of the GTP period to generate electricity from various sources and efforts are going on to attain the target within the remaining GTP period.

“The ministry is working day and night to raise nation’s power generation capacity to 10,000MW by 2015 from 2,268 MW now,” Water, Irrigation and Energy Minister Alemayehu Tegenu told WIC recently.

“The overall energy coverage of the country is also expected to reach 75 per cent by 2015 from the present 54 per cent,” he said.

In order to attain the plan set in the GTP, power projects with 8,500 MW power generation capacity are being executed in various parts of the country, the minister said.   

According to him, the country has a plan to produce 8,123MW electricity from water, some 153MW from wind, 300MW from solar and 50MW from garbage which, all of them are under implementation.

In addition to the execution of power projects, the ministry has launched solar systems project, which will be used to power 25,000 homes in rural areas of the country.

Since the launch of the project, 23,000 solar systems have been installed, thus benefiting several households, he said.

Moreover, the country has set a plan to build 14, 000 biogas technology plants within the GTP period, out of which 3,500 biogas are being built every year, he said.

The country has also managed to save 100MW on daily bases through distributing power saving bulbs to households, Alemayhu Added.

Ethiopia has exploitable power potential of 45,000 MW from water; 1.3 million MW from wind, and over 7,000 MW from geothermal energy, it was learnt.

Source: Walta information Center  (WIC)