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March 14, 2020 10:00 am

South Sudan Is Building Its Electric Grid Virtually From Scratch

After years of civil war, South Sudan is beginning to build the nation's electric sector from the ground up. "With only a handful of oil-fired power plants and crumbling poles and wires in place, the country is striving for a system that runs primarily on renewable energy and reaches more homes and businesses," reports IEEE Spectrum. From the report: Today, only about 1 percent of South Sudan's 12.5 million people can access the electric grid, according to the state-run utility. Many people use rooftop solar arrays or noisy, polluting diesel generators to keep the lights on; still many more are left in the dark. Those who can access the grid must pay some of the highest electricity rates in the world for a spotty and unreliable service. Recently, development banks and foreign companies have started backing projects to revitalize infrastructure and boost power generation amid a relatively tranquil time for the eight-year-old country. Most of the new investment has focused in and around Juba -- the nation's capital and largest city, with some 403,000 residents. The work to restore South Sudan's electric sector began in earnest in late 2018, after South Sudan's President Salva Kiir reached a peace deal with rebel leader Riek Machar. (Earlier this year, Kiir appointed Machar as vice president.) Last November, South Sudan Electricity Corporation began operating the first section of Juba's rehabilitated distribution network. Power Construction Corporation of China strung up new 33-kilovolt lines, replacing the city's 11-kilovolt lines, a network that will eventually supply 20,000 additional customers in the capital city. The Chinese firm is also producing 13,450 prestressed concrete poles from a new facility in Juba. The African Development Bank has approved a US $14.6 million loan for the grid project. For now, however, most of Juba's residents are still using their own power supplies to run refrigerators or charge computers. The utility dismantled the old grid, and the upgraded system is proceeding slowly in phases.

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