Pylon failure leaves 500 Mw Sudan power plant offline

The 500 megawatt Um Debakir thermal power plant in Rabak, White Nile state, is currently out of service after a pylon collapsed during bad weather, the Sudanese Electricity Transmission Company says.

In a press statement yesterday, the company confirmed that bad weather conditions led to the collapse of one of the pylons between Mashkour and Rabak, which is part of the electricity feed to Jebel Awlia in southern Khartoum.

The company says that work is underway to repair the tower in order to restore power service to the affected areas as soon as possible.

The Ministry of Energy commented in a statement yesterday that Energy Minister Mohamed Abdallah Mahmoud will announce that adequate arrangements have been made to compensate the current power shortage with reserves from the Roseires power plant in Blue Nile state and the Renk plant in South Sudan until the repair is completed.

The Ministry of Energy said that the concrete base of the pylon was fortunately not affected, which means the repair should not take more than a week. The transfer of new iron components to rebuild the pylon started at dawn today.