The Grand Renaissance Dam will start generating 700 MW of electricity in 2015, according to Ethiopia’s National Council. The council’s deputy director general ZadingAbreha said that by next year, two out of the 16 planned turbines will begin to generate a total of 700 MW (325 MW each).
Over $35 million worth of equipment began to arrive in late-2011 for the construction of what will be Africa’s largest hydrodam. A year later in January 2014, Alstom signed a €250-million contract with Metals & Engineering Corporation (METEC) to supply turbines and generators for the plant. Alstom was in charge of supervising the installation of all the equipment – including the turbines that will produce the 700 MW expected in 2015. Currently the 6 GW dam’s investment has seen $1.3 billion injected and 30% of the total project complete after Ethiopia began diverting the flow of the Blue Nile River, a tributary of the Nile, last May.
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