Efforts by Burma’s military regime to improve the country’s unreliable electricity supply ahead of promised national elections next year face big hurdles.
A new hydroelectric dam near the central city of Mandalay is being tested this month and in theory it could expand Burma’s power generating capacity by over 40 percent.
Additionally, a 150-kilometer pipeline is to be built in the south to carry gas to Rangoon, seemingly to alleviate perpetual power shortages there.
An inadequate and decrepit infrastructure, however, is likely to result in wastage of much of any extra electricity—if it isn’t sold to China anyway.
Chinese developers are this month conducting tests on the 790-megawatt capacity Yeywa hydro dam nearing completion on the Myitnge River.
The project, which has been under construction since 2004 and has reportedly cost more than US $600 million, should raise Burma’s electricity generating capacity by more than 40 percent. However, with so much Chinese involvement—including investment of about $200 million—some of the power might be pumped north into China’s equally hungry Yunnan province, observers believe.
The Yeywa dam, 50 kilometers south of blackout-plagued Mandalay, is about 300 kilometers from the Chinese border.
Burma has one of the world’s worst electricity generating capacities—a mere 1,700 megawatts for a population of around 50 million.
In comparison, neighboring Thailand has about 30,000 megawatts for a population of about 60 million people.
Burma’s power predicament is exacerbated by the fact that more than 25 percent of the electricity generated is lost “in transmission and distribution” through poor cable equipment, according to figures published in a report by the United States Central Intelligence Agency.
Burmese state-controlled media have said the Yeywa electricity will be pumped into what passes for a national grid via 230-volt cable.
“Burma’s electricity grid system is far from national because it’s concentrated in the central belt between Rangoon and Mandalay,” Bangkok-based energy industries analyst-consultant Collin Reynolds told The Irrawaddy.
“Under half of it has a 230-volt capacity, so even within the limited transmission region much of the cable is probably inadequate for handling a big boost in supply such as might come out of the Yeywa [power plant],” Reynolds said.
Even within the electricity transmission belt, noisy and polluting diesel generators are in daily use as essential backup.
Most of northern and southeast Burma and nearly all border areas have no connection to the grid.
Despite these infrastructure failings, the Burmese military government has approved at least 12 hydro dams across the country.
If they are all built they would have a generating capacity of over 22,000 megawatts. But much of this is earmarked to be pumped into China, India or Thailand.
Many dam projects are still at the drawing board stage and involve Chinese and Indian state engineering companies. China’s Sinohydro Corporation—a principal developer at Yeywa—figures in a number of them.
China is especially interested in using Burma as a proxy for hydro dams because back home it is facing increasingly vociferous opposition from environmentalists. Protests led Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to curtail river dam developments in neighboring Yunnan.
The NGO Burma Rivers Network, a rights and environmental organization that monitors river developments, says dams in Burma lead to “displacement, militarization, human rights abuses, and irreversible environmental damage, threatening the livelihoods and food security of millions. The power and revenues generated are going to the military regime and neighboring countries.”
The Yeywa dam completion coincides with the award of a $77 million contract to Singapore engineering firm Swiber to build a pipeline to carry gas from the Yadana gas field in the Gulf of Martaban to Rangoon.
The contract was issued by the junta-controlled Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), which has a stake in Yadana managed by Total of France. MOGE says the gas is to fuel Burma’s largest city and commercial center.
Most of the 780 million cubic feet of gas produced daily by Yadana goes to Thailand, but MOGE says it intends to have 200 million cubic feet a day delivered to Rangoon for domestic use by mid-2010.
Several small gas turbine plants exist in the greater Rangoon area, but wider use of gas to fuel more power plants would require new investment, and there is little backup capacity when problems strike.
In July, for instance, the Myanmar Electric Power Enterprise cut power supply in Rangoon to just six hours a day because of infrastructure damage caused by bad weather.
About 70 percent of Thailand’s electricity is generated by gas, and at least half of it comes from Burma.
But while Burma sits in the blackout dark, neighboring Thailand has a power glut, caused by over-development coupled with a sharp drop in domestic demand for electricity due to a recession triggered by the global financial crisis.
Thailand's surfeit could be good news for Shan communities living along the Salween river near the Thai-Burmese border.
The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand is having second thoughts about its agreements to cooperate in the construction of up to five hydro dams on the Salween, which would produce thousands of megawatts it probably no longer needs.
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