Feature story |
||||||
| Home > News & events > 2006 feature stories > Power to the people of Georgia | ||||||
Power to the people of Georgia |
||||||
Power cuts were the daily routine in post-Soviet Georgia, with blackouts lasting for as long as two weeks. They became emblematic of the country’s precipitous economic decline, played out in degraded living standards in what was once one of the USSR’s most prosperous republics. Households, businesses, hospitals and schools had to make do, or die. On the home front they substituted with often-faulty gas heaters (one of which killed Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania in 2005). Or they financed their own private generators, or paid bribes, in the case of some bigger industrial concerns, to ensure scarce power from the central system was diverted to them. Since 1998 the EBRD and the European Commission (EC) have been helping to unpick the knots in Georgia’s energy supply, in part by investing in the Enguri hydropower station, the country’s main power source. It has been a long and torturous road and the job isn’t finished yet, but residents can now flick on their light switches in Tbilisi at any time of day and find the electricity is working. Improvements at Enguri will help Georgia to reduce imports of expensive natural gas used for power generation and improve security of supply by replacing it with renewable domestic hydropower. Geopolitical power play Enguri was built in 1978 to provide peak electricity to the then Soviet Union. By the time the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, the plant urgently needed rehabilitation following years of zero maintenance. The plant’s unit three shut down completely in 1993, robbing the country of 10 per cent of its power supply; other units operated below capacity. Rehabilitation seemed impossible. The state argued it had no funds. And the plant straddles a disputed internal frontier with Abkhazia, a territory that has long fought for independence from Georgia. Merab Daritaia is the Chief Engineer of Sakhydroenergomsteri, the state company that built the hydropower plant. He was just 22 years old when he moved to Sokhumi city – in what is now the Abkhazian-controlled zone – to build the Enguri power house. He remembers that 21,000 people were employed to build the plant. “There I met my wife,” says Mr Daritaia. In Sokhumi, his son, Temur, was born. The plant became his life. He has spent 25 years in the settlement. The memory of watching it decay brings tears to the eyes of a now grey-haired Mr Daritaia. In 1998, the EBRD agreed to lend the Georgian government $38.75 million to rehabilitate Enguri; the EC offered a grant of €9.4 million. “This was a brave decision as the plant was in a conflict zone,” says Mr Daritaia. The project floundered for a number of years for many reasons including the Abkhazia conflict and difficulties in tendering the project contracts in accordance with EBRD’s stringent anti-corruption procurement rules. At last, Georgian technicians were allowed to enter Abkhazia to repair the power house; in return, the Abkhazians would receive free energy. Towards the power house Driving towards the power house, Mr Daritaia feels uncomfortable going through an unofficial checkpoint manned by young Abkhazians. “There have been times when our workers have been kept at gunpoint,” he says, “but I believe that the rehabilitation helped to build a working relationship with the Abkhazians.” In March 2006, armed guards from elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Independent States were brought to guard the plant on the Abkhazian side. One of them, aged 23, comments that “guards like me are essential to safeguard peace and normal life.” In the power house, all the equipment is new and carries English rather than Russian trademarks. “Three out of five energy generating units have been restored thanks to the EBRD loan and together they now produce enough to supply a quarter of the country’s needs,” says Malkhaz Tskvitishvili, the Project Manager. He leads the way into the galleries within the 271-metre-high dam, the world’s highest arch dam, and discusses with Laurent Chabrier, the EBRD banker involved in Enguri, how this loan has changed the plant. The plant was shut down completely in March 2006 so that rehabilitation could start. Beneath the dam reservoir is a series of huge galleries, one atop the other, containing equipment essential to plant operations. “About 5.3 kilometres of galleries were rehabilitated,” says Mr Tskvitishvili. “They were flooded in water.” The pressure gallery, 100 metres under the water reservoirs and the riskiest point of the dam site, was rehabilitated. So were the valve chamber, the pressure tunnel and the equipment to monitor geophysical movement that could weaken the dam. A safer, more dependable dam “It is now safer to work in the plant,” observes Mr Chabrier. “This project has improved safety in terms of the dam, the workers and the region. Above all, it has brought reliable electricity to Georgia.” And that is not all. About 140 staff were trained thanks to a Swiss government grant, a road linking the power house with the dam was rebuilt and the workers’ settlements were refurbished in Potskho, the ‘village of the dam’. Five hundred people live there, of whom 300 are rehabilitating the dam. Jimi Akubardia, one of them, disappears inside the dam every morning at 7am. He is too busy cleaning and dismantling equipment to have time for talk. His parents and grandparents depend on his $380 per month salary. No power cuts in Tbilisi “The three power units came back on stream on 14 July 2006,” says Mr Tskvitishvili. The EBRD is now considering extending the loan to cover rehabilitation of the remaining two energy generating units. “The Enguri hydropower plant is essential to Georgia. It covers 40 per cent of Georgia’s total energy consumption. The state was not strong enough alone to rehabilitate this plant,” says Archil Mamatelashvili, Deputy Minister of Energy. “We needed the EBRD and the EC to raise finance.” Much has changed since the blackout days. A former Minister of Energy is now in prison, charged with corruption. And the power company will be able to fund its own maintenance programme: 70 per cent of customers now pay for electricity compared to only 30 per cent in 2002. “Drive around the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, in the evening and you feel you are in a city as brightly lit as Las Vegas,” says Malkhaz Tskvitishvili.
By Marjola Xhunga, communications adviser
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
| Terms and conditions Sitemap Feedback | ||||||
