Wind Energy Development in Sudan

The imminent exhaustion of fossil energy resources, and the increasing demand for energy were motives for those reasonable in Sudan to put into practice an energy policy based on rational use of energy; and on exploitation of new, and renewable energy sources. After 1980, as the supply of conventional energy has not been able to fellow the tremendous increase of the production demand in rural areas of Sudan, a renewed interest for the application of wind energy has shown in many places. Therefore, the Sudanese government began to pay more attention to wind energy utilisation in rural areas. Because the wind energy resource in many rural areas is sufficient for attractive application of wind pumps, and as fuel is insufficient, the wind pumps will be spread on a rather large scale in the near future. A number of years worth of data concerning wind speed in Sudan have been compiled, evaluated and presented in this article. This paper presents the background and ideas of the development of the concept as well as the main results, and experience gained during ongoing project up to now. Results suggest that wind energy must be encouraged, promoted, invested, implemented, and demonstrated, but especially for remote rural areas.