By the Numbers: The 500/220 kV Khartoum/Rabak Substation | ICC Energy
Khartoum/Rabak Substation — ICC Energy DWC-LLC
ICC Energy — Project Feature
By the Numbers: The 500/220 kV Khartoum/Rabak Substation
Every completed substation carries a story in its numbers — megavolt-amperes, kilometers of earthing conductor, months on site.
ICC Energy DWC-LLC | Khartoum/Rabak, Republic of Sudan
The Design and Construction of the 500/220 kV Power Transformation Substation and associated interconnection works at Khartoum/Rabak, delivered by ICC Energy DWC-LLC for the Sudanese Electricity Transmission Company (SETCO), tells its story that way. Here's the project, told through the figures that defined it.
$51,749,148.83
The total contract value, payable exclusively in US Dollars. That currency clause wasn't incidental. Built into Clause 6 of the contract, it was designed specifically to shield the project from exchange-rate volatility, a reflection of the economic conditions under which this substation was delivered. Every payment, from the 15% advance to the final Interim Payment Certificate, moved in dollars, not Sudanese Pounds.
500 kV
For ICC Energy, this project marked a step up the voltage ladder from the 400/230 kV substations the company had delivered elsewhere in the region. At the heart of the station sit two autotransformers, each rated at 315 MVA, stepping power down from 500 kV to 220 kV — a combined capacity of 630 MVA moving through a single site. Backing them up is a 500 kV shunt reactor rated at 50 MVAR, keeping the high-voltage system stable under varying load conditions.
24 Months
That was the execution window written into the contract — from Notice to Proceed to a fully operational, grid-connected station. The project's actual arc ran from a commencement date of September 1, 2022, through mechanical completion on August 30, 2024, to final commissioning on September 20, 2024. The Completion Certificate, issued by SETCO on September 23, 2024, confirmed the station had been "successfully executed, received, and operated" and connected to Sudan's National Grid.
120,000 m²
The footprint ICC Energy's civil teams cleared, leveled, and shaped before a single piece of high-voltage equipment could go in — an area equivalent to roughly seventeen football pitches.
Inside that footprint:
- 18,000 m² of internal roads and drainage
- 8,000 m³ of equipment foundations
- 950 m² control building
- 6,500 m of cable trenches
24,000 m
The length of copper conductor forming the substation's main earthing grid — bonded at 420 separate equipment points and backed by 18 dedicated lightning protection towers. Add a fire detection and alarm network spanning 220 points and independent firefighting systems for both power transformers, and the safety systems alone account for nearly $1.92 million of the contract's Bill of Quantities.
10 and 11
Ten SF6-type 500 kV circuit breakers rated at 63kA, and eleven 220 kV circuit breakers rated at 40kA — the switching backbone of the station, joined by dozens of disconnectors, current and voltage transformers, and surge arresters at both voltage levels. Between them, the 500 kV and 220 kV switchyards alone represent over $12.3 million of equipment value.
3
The number of arbitrators who would resolve any dispute the parties couldn't settle amicably — a seat in Paris, under ICC Rules, contract governed by Sudanese law with an English-language arbitration track running alongside an Arabic-language contract. It's a detail easy to skip past, but it signals how this contract was built: a turnkey EPC agreement engineered to hold up on an international stage, in a jurisdiction where currency transfer restrictions and force majeure were treated not as edge cases but as clauses worth writing out in full.
Zero to Fully Energized
In the end, the numbers converge on a single outcome: a 500/220 kV substation at Khartoum/Rabak, built from bare, leveled ground to a live node on Sudan's National Grid, executed on a turnkey basis by ICC Energy DWC-LLC and handed over to SETCO in full working order — the company's most technically demanding transformation substation to date.
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