Aug 21, 2025 (The Ethiopian Herald/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --
Ethiopia has abundant renewable energy sources among others, hydro- power, wind, geothermal, solar, and bio-mass. Ethiopia since long ago had developed and exploited hydropower and utilized the energy for manufacturing, for service sector and for rural electrification.
The country was able to properly exploit only its hydro power potential due to lack of sufficient finance, technology and well-trained manpower. In the recent past the exploring and exploitation of wind, solar and geothermal energy is growing but more efforts is needed to fully exploit.
Electricity is behind every economic and social activity. Electricity is more than just light. It turns rural areas into thriving cities. It plays pivotal role for the flourishing of manufacturing, irrigation farms and financial services which are highly dependent on electric energy. Side by side with producing energy, underlining the distribution task is essential.
Recently the Ethiopian Electric Power Executive Manager Engineer Ashebir Balcha told the local media that, the performance of EEP in the concluded Ethiopian Fiscal has exceeded the plan for the year.
Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP) produced 29,480 gigawatt hours of energy using its 20 power plants by surpassing the planned 25,423 gigawatt hours of energy for the stated period.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and Gibe III Power Plants had a significant share, generating 33.2 & and 24.2 % of the total production respectively.
During the concluded year, the country secured 75.4 billion Birr from sales of electricity to the domestic and foreign markets as well as other related services, the CEO said.
According to him, the macroeconomic reform enabled EEP to increase foreign exchange earnings. EEP's FX revenue increased to 388 million USD from the 140 million USD during the previous fiscal year.
Regarding the progress of the Koysha hydro power plant project and the Ayisha Wind Farm, Ashebir said the projects have reached 71 % and more than 85 % completion respectively. Furthermore, five of the power transmission and distribution projects that were under construction have started providing services.
The CEO revealed that the Ethiopian Electric Power plans to generate 38,124 gigawatt hours of power in this Ethiopian fiscal year and earn 109 billion Birr revenue from energy sales.
At a national level, Ethiopia did not do meaningful expansions of electric distribution networks Melaku Taye, the corporate communication director at the Ethiopian Utility. New power generating projects have been constructed in the country and our electric generating capacity has significantly improved. However, there are no distribution networks to take the generated electricity to households. The distribution part of generating the electricity has been neglected. This is the main reason why the EEU was formed as an independent firm.
Ethiopia's revenue from electricity sales has surged following the implementation of the macroeconomic reform, according to the Ethiopian Electric Power.
The Ethiopian Electric Utility (EEU) has three objectives. First is to decentralize decision making on power and maximize access to electricity. Second is outsourcing. Educated youths are crucial in addressing the ever bulging demand for electricity. And the EEU cannot address this demand. This also ensures employment and technology transfer. The third pillar is to modernize the EEU's internal structure.
EEU is an institution that has been operating for a longtime but has the most backward system. That is why even the population that has access to electricity is not getting quality electric supply.
The clients depend on old electric distribution infrastructures, since it was not upgraded in a timely manner.
As to him, the EEU has reached 81 new rural towns over the past year. They had no electricity before. The institution built 9,800 kilometers long high voltage lines and 789 kilometers of lower voltage lines for these towns.
Usually the EEU is criticized of resource wasting. And to solve this, it has counted and digitized each and every property of the EEU over the past six months, including poles. Now there is digitized information from which transformers, poles and substations.
The EEU buys electricity from the EEP, the power generator, and sales it to end users. The EEU, as an institution, was like a dark forest. But now, it is modernizing itself internally. Until last year, customers had to endure long queues to settle bills or to get a new line. Now, it is history. Corruption was also high, though we did not fully cut it out.
Of our total customers, 363,675 are paying electric bills using digital payment platforms. Of these, 19.7 percent paid at bank branches, 3.7 percent used CBE birr, two percent used mobile banking, and one percent used Telebirr.
In the past many postpaid clients complained that the utility enumerating officers declare the periodic usage without going door to door to refer to the utility meters at each client's houses and issued bills arbitrary. The institute is able to address the complaints after introducing a hand-held device supported by GPS. This forces the officer to go and see the metrics. We have deployed a number of other technology applications, to solve long-lasting problems in the EEU's services.
The institute also installed new call centers that can handle 80 calls at a time, using our own telecom line. We used to rely on Ethio-telecom's line but that was not effective.
The existing distribution network is disproportionally very low, compared to the population's saturation. Hence, the lines are old, over loaded and exposed to frequent power fluctuation. However, since the past few years, the power outage frequency and the time it takes to come back, is highly improving. Fluctuation happens when infrastructure at some point is damaged, including a transformer explosion, at which point we use planned interruptions, whereby some areas get light while others do not by redirecting the lines.
The first phase of upgrading networks in Addis Ababa, Adama, Hawassa, Bahir Dar, and Jima has been undergoing. Currently, similar network upgrading projects are underway in Wolaita, Shashemene, Gondar, Harar, Debrebirhan, and Debremarkos.
New upgrading projects are also underway in all towns within 50 kilometer radius surrounding Addis Ababa.
A new project office was established to kick-off the projects in ten new towns, after the study was finalized and USD 175 million in finances was secured.
Another study has also been finalized to start network upgrading projects in 64 towns. All these projects deal with upgrading existing distribution lines for regional capital cities, zonal down to woredas.
Ethiopia's geographical area is very vast. It takes very huge investment to cover this huge landmass with distribution networks. There is also no time to achieve this. It is not feasible. Remote areas far from grid lines must get the access to electricity through off-grid systems. We have already finalized a number of studies for feasible off-grid towns and villages.
Two years ago, EEU started off-grid projects in 12 rural towns. Last year, 29 off-grid projects have been launched, including the four that rolled over from the previous year. For instance, Kurile is found on the tip of Ethiopia's border in Somali region. There are similar areas in Gambella, Bale, and Omorate that are too far to access grid lines.
Close to 70 percent of electric infrastructure equipment and input is imported. EEU is encouraging local suppliers now, to save forex. But even local manufacturers need forex to import the inputs.
COMTEX_468206129/2029/2025-08-21T11:33:48
by Abebe Woldegiorsis
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