Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
Summary
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD or TaIHiGe; ታላቁ የኢትዮጵያ ሕዳሴ ግድብ, ግድብ ሕዳሰ ኢትዮጵያ, Hidha Haaromsaa Guddicha Itoophiyaa), formerly known as the Millennium Dam and sometimes referred to as the Hidase Dam (ሕዳሴ ግድብ, Hidha Hidāsē), is a gravity dam on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia under construction since 2011.
The dam is in the Benishangul-Gumuz Region of Ethiopia, about east of the border with Sudan.
The primary purpose of the dam is electricity production to relieve Ethiopia's acute energy shortage and for electricity export to neighbouring countries. With a planned installed capacity of 5.15 gigawatts, the dam will be the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa when completed,
as well as among the 20 largest in the world.
First phase of filling the reservoir began in July 2020 and in August 2020 water level increased to 540 meters (40 meters higher than the bottom of the river which is at 500 meters above sea level).
The second phase of filling was completed on 19 July 2021, water level increased to around 575 meters.
The third filling was completed on 12 August 2022 to a level of . Actual water level (November 2022) is at around 605 meters and was measured at Sentinel images. It will take between 4 and 7 years to fill with water,
depending on hydrologic conditions during the filling period.
On 20 February 2022, the dam produced electricity for the first time, delivering it to the grid at a rate of 375 MW.
A second 375 MW turbine was commissioned in August 2022.
The name that the Blue Nile river takes in Ethiopia ("Abay") is derived from the Ge'ez word for 'great' to imply its being 'the river of rivers'. The word Abay still exists in Ethiopian major languages to refer to anything or anyone considered to be superior.
The eventual site for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was identified by the United States Bureau of Reclamation in the course of the Blue Nile survey, which was conducted between 1956 and 1964 during the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie.
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.