Within the coming few days, Egypt and Sudan are expected to officially demand details on construction modifications on the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam of which Ethiopia did not previously inform the two countries.
Senior governmental sources in charge of the Renaissance Dam construction said Ethiopia modified the construction standards of the dam to increase the rate of generated electricity up from the declared rates.
The French firm which is carrying out the studies has already started work on hydraulic and environmental reports on the project, the sources said.
The international committee for the dam, which includes experts from the three countries, will convene in March in Cairo, the sources said. The talks will tackle what was declared recently by Ethiopia and discuss the preliminary reports prepared by the consulting office, as well as the studies it received from the three countries.
The modified standards will not affect the steps already taken toward building confidence, which were confirmed in the Declaration of Principles signed in March 2015 between the heads of the three countries, the sources added.
Ethiopian media channels, including Ezega news website, reported that the authorities havemodified the construction standards of the dam to increase its capacity to generate electricity from 6,000 up to 6,450 megawatts (MW); and that the changes are dependent on an increase in the number of electricity generators.
“Initially, the dam was designed to generate 5,250MW. However, due to the upgrades made to the power plant, its generation capacity was raised to 6,000 MW. Six years later, the total installed generation capacity of the dam has been increased by an additional 450MW as a result of the improvement made on generators to boost the capacity of the power plant,” Ezega said.
The Ethiopian news agency quoted Debretsion Gebremichael, member of the executive committee for the council of public mobilization on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, as saying that the modifications to improve the dam capacity have nothing to do with the water flow from the river and will not harm the downstream countries.
