Description of Events of the Workshop on Energy Resources in Sudan

The workshop was held in The Middle East Association (Bury House, London St James's) on the 27th of February 1997. The Workshop was open to both Members of the Middle East Association and SESUKI, as well as the Sudanese public, as it was advertised for in several Arabic Newspapers.

At the start, Mr. Constant, B. P., the Director General of The Middle East Association, welcomed Dr Dafa'Alla, Adil (The chairman of SESUKI) who explained the role of SESUKI- notably to raise awareness in the UK and Ireland of the engineering and related issues in the Sudan by providing accurate information, issuing occasional papers and meeting to debate relevant topics. Through SESUKI's work over the last two to three years the Workshop some 3,000 books have been shipped to sudden thanks to the generosity of the Society members and donors.

The chairman introduced the speakers; he reminded the audience that Sudan has substantial oil reserves, is a huge country of 1 million square miles, has the longest river in the world running through it, is covered as to 20-30% by forest and the sun beats down throughout the year.

Operational Problem Related to the National electricity Grid of Sudan
By Dr Abdelrahman Karrar (Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, University of Khartoum-Sudan) and Dr Mutasim A. Mahmoud (Former Head of the Department of Electrical engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, University of Khartoum-Sudan).

This paper was presented by Dr Karrar who thankfully managed to attend despite the difficulty of covering his expenses from Sudan. He stated that the Sudan has a total power capacity of 600 MW. The efficient use of this resource suffers from mismanagement and under investment- whether it is in maintenance or replacement of parts and equipment.

The migration from rural areas as Sudan moves towards a market-oriented economy has impacted on the efficient use of the country's power resources. As hydro-electricity is the major part of the installed capacity, the optimum use of the installed power affected by the dry season, as well as floods during the wet season. Power cuts take place (so called power shedding), as the capacity available does not meet the demand. Turbines are shut down arising from poor or little overhaul.

Dr Karrar's presentation was related mainly to problems of the 500km long 220kV line that carries power from the Roseries (where a dam is constructed on the Blue Nile) to Khartoum. The installed capacity of this line is 280MW, but the engineers achieve only some 160/170MW with an absolute maximum of 200/210MW when conditions permit.

Dr Karrar described various measures that have been studied to readdress this situation including reordering the phase configuration on the existing line, constructing a new parallel line with similar / different characteristics to the existing one, and replacing the current 400 mm² (X-sectional area) line with two-conductor bundle. The less costly of these appeared to be the last one i.e."bundling" (by combining lines over the present system), which it was thought would provide capacity about equal to that a new parallel line of same characteristics will offer.

He went on to discuss the impact of the irregular flow of water in the Blue Nile. Development work, namely the heightening of the Roseries Dam, is going slowly and will not be completed by the year 2000 (the original target date), as it was already beyond schedule. New dams, notably up north Sudan in Kagbar (near Dongola) are currently being considered with expenditure of 300 Million US dollars. It could prove possible to raise the total installed capacity by some 300 MW, as Dr Karrar conjectured. Apart from funding, a major difficulty is that total demand for the power in Sudan is unknown.

The Eco-efficient Dwelling Prospects for Khartoum City
By Ms Amel Sheikheldin Mohamed Abdulla, Tulane School of Architecture, USA

As Ms Abdulla had been unable to join the workshop from the USA, her paper was presented by Dr Ahmed, Yousif (The vice-chairman and academic secretary of SESUKI). The principal concepts of this ecological and energy efficient (eco-efficient) prospect are:

1. The dwelling should be compatible with the climate in Khartoum City (with hybrid characteristics of dry desert and hot humid tropical climate).
2. The building and construction should incorporate indigenous materials and method.
3. Solar energy should be employed.
4. Water should be conserved and re-cycled.

Factors in the design which should be incorporated:

• Orientation of the building to take advantage of prevailing wind for maximum cooling and avoidance of the sun heat. This is achieved by siting the longest sides in the East-West axis while the shortest in the North-South axis.
• To avoid undue exposure to the sun, as far as possible, windows should be placed on the north and south sides and any windows to the east and west sides should be as small as possible.
• The kitchen should be sited away from the living areas, if it necessary to be near the living area, then a buffer area containing the freezers, fridge or drinking water pots should be located between the stove or cooking areas and the living areas.
• Trees and greenery should shade the house.

Some interesting plans and designs provided by Ms Abdulla were shown and some ideas are new for the audience, namely the underground construction (by placing part of the house beneath the earth by 2.5-10 m).

One public house, namely a hospital in Umdurman, at least in Sudan was known to employ solar power and was reported to work very satisfactory.

Engineer Ahmed encountered travel difficulties and his paper was presented by Dr Dafa'Alla, the chairman. He started his presentation by mentioning that the Sudan's population numbers some 29 millions, of whom 20% lives in urban areas and 80% in rural or semi-rural areas.

A World health organization (WHO) standard provided that a village of fifty household requires 30,000 liters of water per day. This figure is thought to be generous for the economy of rural areas in Sudan.

Irrigation has limited used s in agriculture in Sudan. The country relies on the mighty river Nile for irrigating the Gezera and Managil schemes by gravity, but other schemes relied on pump stations e.g. Rahad and Kennana projects and several private and estate-owned projects in northern Sudan. However, remote areas, especially in the Western regions (Kordofan and Darfur) and eastern parts of Sudan rely on rainwater for agriculture. Most remote areas rely on diesel pumps fitted to (sometimes very deep) artesian wells to provide water for living. Diesel fuel has to be imported and is expensive.

Exhaustive tests on photo voltaic (PV) pumps (solar powered) employed at different research centers in central, northern and western regions of the Sudan, showed that PV pumps would prove as efficient as diesel power. However, they have lower running costs and pose no threat to the environment and their cost fell from about US$ 100 per peak watt in 1974, to less than US$ 4 per watt in 1995 (this information is from Ms Abdulla paper). The sun provides the required radiation in Sudan for rural water needs to be met by pumps employing power from photo voltaic cells.

There could be capital cost factors to be taken into account, but the basic principle of using PV was argued convincingly.

A short but lively question and answer session concluded the workshop. If anybody is interested to know more about this workshop or other SESUKI activities, please e-mail sesuki at:sesuki@hotmail.com or write to SESUKI on:
P.O.Box 10969,
London, W12 7WJ,
United Kingdom.