Sudan’s Energy and Mines Ministry has appointed the UK’s Merz & McLellan to prepare a study for a 400km, 500kV transmission line running to the country’s capital, Khartoum. The line will originate at a proposed 1000MW hydroelectric dam on the Nile at Merowe. The project includes a substation at Khartoum to reduce voltage to 220kV.

Merz & Mclellan says its report, to be completed by April 2000, will be included in the documentation used in approaches to lending agencies.

Plans for the Merowe scheme are based on designs originally prepared by the then-Soviet Union in the 1980s.