Ethiopia readies Grand Renaissance Dam

Ethiopia is finalizing construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam, its first major dam on the Blue Nile, and will then start filling the giant reservoir behind it to power Africa’s biggest hydroelectric plant

Cairo
Nile
EGYPT 
SUDAN
Khartoum
White Nile
SOUTH SUDAN
UGANDA
Lake Victoria
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD)
1,000km 
600 miles
YEMEN SOMALIA
Blue Nile
Addis Ababa 
ETHIOPIA
KENYA 
TANZANIA

Construction: Launched in December 2010. Dam likely to be finished late 2017 or early 2018

Cost: $5 billion

Power: 6,400MW – big boost for Ethiopia’s 100 million people, most of whom lack access to electricity

Reservoir: 74bn cubic metres of water – equivalent to entire annual flow of Blue Nile at Sudan border

Impact: Downstream countries fear dam will reduce water supplies. Blue Nile supplies 60 percent of water that reaches Nile – main water source for Egypt’s 93 million people

Emergency spillway
Reservoir: Covers 1,680 sq km – about four times as big as Cairo. Could take from five
to 15 years to fill
Penstocks
Project also includes rockfill saddle dam and gated spillway south of main dam
Main dam World’s largest roller-compacted concrete dam. Height: 155m Length: 1,780m
Powerhouses 16 turbines*
*Estimated annual capacity 15,000 gigawatt hours
BLUE N I L E


Sources: Associated Press, HydroWorld, Salini Impregilo              © GRAPHIC NEWS