IEEE article on power generation in Iraq

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Rafe Colburn <rafeco () gmail com>
Date: February 27, 2006 10:09:36 AM EST
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: IEEE article on power generation in Iraq

 This article is fascinating. (The site hosting it unfortunately seems
rather slow right now.)

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/2831

Re-engineering Iraq
By: Glenn Zorpette

"We had an incident", the engineer tells me.

These four words get your attention in Iraq.

We're in the northern outskirts of Baghdad, in a spotless white
conference room at the new Quds power station. We're out in the Red
Zone, the area surrounding central Baghdad's massively guarded Green
Zone enclave. There are probably people nearby, perhaps as close as
the sprawling crude-oil pumping facility across the road, who would
kill us if they got the chance. That's why we've arrived at the plant
in two convoys, each with three heavily armored SUVs and a security
contingent of eight men outfitted with assault rifles, grenades, body
armor, radios, electronic beacons, navigational and medical equipment,
and other gear.

It's a lot of men, guns, and hardware for a routine meeting at a power
plant. But the statistics bear out the caution. As of this past
November, at least 412 civilian contractors had been killed in Iraq,
according to U.S. Department of Labor figures cited in a recent report
to the U.S. Congress. Scores more had been injured or kidnapped and
released. The contractors included all kinds of workers: engineers,
security agents, truck drivers, even cooks.

 To put the figures in perspective, there are well over a thousand
engineers in Iraq working on reconstruction, [see "Who's Minding the
Contractors?"] several thousand if you include military and Iraqi
engineers. About 2000 of some 3200 projects have been completed,
according to U.S. government figures released this past autumn. The
projects range from the refurbishment of schoolrooms to the
construction of airfields and huge new transmission substations. As of
fall 2005, the United States had spent or committed more than US $20
billion to the effort, other countries had pledged $13.6 billion, and
Iraq itself had contributed about $24 billion, including seized assets
of Saddam Hussein.

It would be hard to find another endeavor, anywhere, anytime, in which
so much was asked of engineers, personally and professionally. Never
before has so vast a reconstruction program been attempted in the face
of enemy fire or managed in the shadow of geopolitics, where
infrastructure itself became a battleground.

...

 So, nearly three years after reconstruction began, why does Iraq's
electrical infrastructure still fall short by 4000 MW?

There are a lot of reasons. Here are the fundamental ones:

    * A poor match between generating technologies and the kinds of
fuels available in Iraq.

    * A well-armed insurgency that has made destroying electrical
infrastructure a centerpiece of its bid to destroy the country's
fledgling democracy.

    * Revenue levels coming into the Ministry of Electricity that are
so low as to be insignificant, a function of a ruinously low rate
structure and far too few electric meters actually recording how much
power people are using.

    * Management and personnel problems at all levels of the
government, including the ministry, which is generally believed to
have thousands of fictitious employees created for the sole purpose of
getting a paycheck cashed by someone else.

    * The erosion of operational and, particularly, maintenance skills
among workers at the country's Ministry of Electricity.


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