Substantial quantities of wood fuels were also used by commercial operations—chiefly baking and brick making and, to a lesser extent, tobacco curing.
Consumption of wood and charcoal continued to increase as the population grew, and there was concern over the gradual depletion of forest and woodland resources serving the large towns.
Overuse of the sparser vegetation in the semi-desert grazing areas reportedly resulted in some fuel deficiencies in those regions, as well as in desertification.
The modern system dates from 1925 with the establishment of the Sudan Light and Power Company, an enterprise financed and managed by British entrepreneurs but owned by the Condominium government.
The first hydropower station began operating at the Sennar Dam in 1962, and a transmission line carried power to the Khartoum area.
The main hydropower station began producing electricity in 1973 at the Roseires Dam on the Blue Nile, approximately 315 miles southeast of Khartoum.
[1] In January 2010, a contract was awarded to Norplan, a Norwegian organization, to design three new power stations on tributaries of the Nile in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation was expected to be the main contractor, but Asian companies such as the Chinese firms that constructed the Merowe Dam were also likely to be involved.
The China International Water and Electric Company was the main contractor for construction of the dam, and Harbin Power agreed to build seven substations and approximately 1,610 kilometers of transmission lines.
Two consortia of Chinese, Greek, and Italian firms bid for the contract to build three packages of the civil works portion of the dam, which was estimated to cost US$1.9 billion.
In March 2009, President al-Bashir attended a ceremony to inaugurate the tenth and final electricity unit at the power station, which brought the Merowe Dam up to its full generation capacity.
The DIU also had plans for water-harvesting projects in North Kordofan (a state that has no year-round flowing rivers), and proposals to build dams and water reservoirs in Sodiri, Al-Nuhud, and Hamrat al-Sheikh.
The cement plant had a capacity of 1.6 million tonnes a year to help meet demand from the construction-related boom in and around Khartoum.