industryterm:electricity infrastructure

Palestinians also to blame for Gaza electricity crisis
Don’t give a pass to the two rival Palestinian leaderships, who cynically clash with each other at the expense of their people in the Gaza Strip

Amira Hass Jun 26, 2017 1
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-1.797751

We must discuss the responsibility of the two Palestinian “governments” for leaving the Gaza Strip in the dark. This article is not meant to absolve Israel of responsibility for the crisis and the chain of catastrophic, horrific disasters it is now creating and will create in the future. Israel is the de facto ruler in the Strip. The siege Israel is imposing on Gaza has led to unprecedented levels of poverty in the coastal enclave. Israel bombed and destroyed the power plant’s transformers and fuel tanks, and it restricts the entry of construction and other raw materials that are required for the speedy rehabilitation and repair of the electricity infrastructure, including the power station.
But we must not absolve the two rival Palestinian leaderships, who are clashing with each other cynically and brutally, at the expense of their people in Gaza. In this repulsive spat, electricity is a particularly complex issue. Here are some of the main problems:
Collection of accounts: Gaza owes the Palestinian Finance Ministry in Ramallah a fortune for unpaid electricity bills. The Israeli siege has left most Gazan residents impoverished, with about 80 percent of them dependent on aid. Many simply cannot pay. But there are others who jump on the bandwagon and don’t pay: official (Hamas) institutions; municipalities; mosques; and probably some businesses that have survived the siege.
Ramallah is not the rich uncle that can absorb everything. The restrictions on movement and development imposed by Israel on the West Bank greatly constrict the economy there. When they want to, the Hamas authorities know full well how to collect multiple taxes from their residents. Why aren’t they trying harder to collect money for electricity, which has to be transferred to the treasury in Ramallah?
Taxation: The Palestinian Authority is supposed to transfer the diesel fuel needed to operate the private power plant in Gaza, but it doesn’t grant a full tax exemption on the fuel, as it previously promised. Gazans say the poverty there justifies a full tax exemption. The Hamas authorities claim the revenues go to the treasury in Ramallah.

Les approvisionnements d’électricité en Chine | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21714325-transmitting-power-over-thousands-kilometres-requires-new-electricity?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/electricity_now_flows_across_continents_courtesy_of_direct_current

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Transmitting power over thousands of kilometres requires a new electricity infrastructure.

THE winds of the Oklahoma panhandle have a bad reputation. In the 1930s they whipped its over-tilled topsoil up into the billowing black blizzards of the Dust Bowl. The winds drove people, Steinbeck’s dispossessed, away from their livelihoods and west, to California. Today, the panhandle’s steady winds are a force for creation, not destruction. Wind turbines can generate electricity from them at rock-bottom prices. Unfortunately, the local electrical grid does not serve enough people to match this potential supply. The towns and cities which could use it are far away.

So Oklahoma’s wind electricity is to be exported. Later this year, lawsuits permitting, work will begin on a special cable, 1,100km (700 miles) long, between the panhandle and the western tip of Tennessee. There, it will connect with the Tennessee Valley Authority and its 9m electricity customers. The Plains and Eastern Line, as it is to be known, will carry 4,000MW. That is almost enough electricity to power Greater London. It will do so using direct current (DC), rather than the alternating current (AC) that electricity grids usually employ. And it will run at a higher voltage than such grids use—600,000 volts, rather than 400,000.

Turkish delegation in Gaza to discuss electricity crisis ▻http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-delegation-in-gaza-to-discuss-electricity-crisis.aspx?pag

delegation from Turkey’s Energy and Natural Resources Ministry is currently visiting the Gaza Strip to discuss means of meeting the coastal enclave’s demand for electricity.

The visit came two weeks after Ankara and Tel Aviv agreed to normalize relations following a six-year hiatus.
According to ministry sources, members of the delegation, which arrived in the strip late on July 10, will meet both Israeli officials and representatives of Gaza’s Hamas-run government to discuss means of resolving the problems facing the territory’s energy sector.

Following its visit to Gaza, the Turkish delegation is expected to provide a report on its findings to Energy and Natural Resources Minister Berat Albayrak.

The report will include an assessment of the strip’s energy needs, facts about local production, transmission and distribution of energy and recommendations for tackling the chronic problems plaguing Gaza’s electricity infrastructure.

The report will also be submitted to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Turkish cabinet, after which a roadmap will be prepared on the means of implementing the report’s recommendations.

A number of private Turkish companies have reportedly expressed interest in helping meet Gaza’s energy needs in terms of the production, transmission and distribution of energy.

@rumor #Turquie #Gaza #Electricité

Istanbul could face electricity cuts if big investments not made
▻http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/istanbul-could-face-electricity-cuts-if-big-investments-not-made-

Istanbul could face a serious electricity shortage over the next couple of years unless necessary investments are made, Energy Minister Berat Albayrak told journalists flying with him from Beijing to Ankara after a meeting of G-20 energy ministers.

“If required investments to renew the outmoded infrastructure are not made immediately, Istanbul will face serious power cuts in the next three to five years. We have been carrying large amounts of electricity from Anatolia and the Black Sea region to Istanbul, which poses a big risk,” Albayrak said, daily Milliyet reported on July 4.

He added that the Marmara region, where Istanbul is located, consumes a third of Turkey’s total electricity use.
The government will open new tenders in the upcoming period to gradually increase the use of local coal reserves in Turkey’s electricity production, Albayrak said.

“Some claim that Turkey is turning to coal reserves at a time when the world is turning to renewables. But it should be remembered that the share of the use of coal reserves in Turkey is just 13 percent, which is much lower than the world average of 35-40 percent,” he added.

The energy minister said the aim was to make new coal-fired power plants reach capacities of more than 4,000 megawatts (MW).

The government had recently stated that 85 percent of Turkey’s electricity infrastructure will be modernized over the next five years, with an investment of around 18 billion Turkish Liras.

#Electricité #Turquie #Charbon

Luttes urbaines autour de l’électricité à Beyrouth

J’ai le plaisir de signaler la parution du livre Energy, Power and Protest on the Urban Grid. Geographies of the Electric City, dirigé par Andres Luque Ayala et Jonathan Silver, chez Routledge. On trouvera l’introduction et la table des matières en ligne sur Academia et voici la quatrième de couverture:

Providing a global overview of experiments around the transformation of cities’ electricity networks and the social struggles associated with this change, this book explores the centrality of electricity infrastructures in the urban configuration of social control, segregation, integration, resource access and poverty alleviation. Through multiple accounts from a range of global cities, this edited collection establishes an agenda that recognises the uneven, and often historical, geographies of urban electricity networks, prompting attempts to re-wire the infrastructure configurations of cities and predicating protest and resistance from residents and social movements alike. Through a robust theoretical engagement with established work around the politics of urban infrastructures, the book frames the transformation of electricity systems in the context of power and resistance across urban life, drawing links between environmental and social forms of sustainability. Such an agenda can provide both insight and inspiration in seeking to build fairer and more sustainable urban futures that bring electricity infrastructures to the fore of academic and policy attention.

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#électricité #Beyrout #Liban #livre #énergie
via @ville_en