Visualizing Syria's Electricity Network

In 2024 the World Bank’s Energy Data platform released a comprehensive geospatial dataset of the Syrian electricity transmission network: every primary line at 400 kV and 225 kV, and the substations and generation nodes that tie them together (World Bank, 2024). The operational status of individual assets remains fluid, and will stay fluid while the geopolitical climate does. The topology, where the wires actually run, is a fixed point of reference. This article turns that raw GeoJSON into an interactive map, so the grid can be examined asset by asset rather than argued about in the abstract.

One finding dominates everything else in the data, and it deserves a name: the single spine. Syria’s 400 kV backbone runs as one north-south axis through Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, and nearly everything else hangs off it. A disruption to that central corridor does not degrade the national grid. It bifurcates it, cutting the southern administrative centres off from the northern industrial zones. A country whose grid has one spine can be paralysed at a single vertebra.

A grid is the state’s nervous system

An electricity network functions as the central nervous system of the modern state. When it is compromised, the paralysis extends far beyond industrial output: healthcare delivery, water desalination and the basic functions of urban governance fail with it. The structural integrity of a national power grid is therefore a barometer of economic viability and sovereign stability, and in the Levant the Syrian network is more than a domestic asset. It is a piece of regional architecture, the physical link between the energy markets of the Gulf and those of Anatolia.

In Syria, over a decade of fragmented control and kinetic damage has left a topological baseline that is as much a map of past dependencies as a blueprint for future recovery. Mapping generation nodes against transit capacities makes the network’s resilience, and its absence, visible in a way a static map cannot.

The single spine, from Birecik to Amman

The 400 kV backbone is the stabilising force of the national system, engineered to move large quantities of power from distant generation hubs to the industrial and residential heartlands. Crucially, it was never designed as an island. The corridor was built to carry international interconnections, with Jordan via Amman to the south and Turkey via Birecik to the north, positioning Syria as a transit bridge within the regional energy landscape. Recent assessments indicate that these interconnections are currently non-operational, the product of conflict-related destruction and prolonged neglect (World Bank, 2025). Restoring them is not merely a Syrian priority. It is a regional economic imperative, the precondition for re-establishing a stable Levantine power pool (IEA, 2024).

The concentration of these lines along a single axis is where the systemic risk lives. One break in the middle splits the country in two. The vulnerability is compounded by technical losses estimated at over 6 per cent in the transmission system, the accumulated cost of missing maintenance and spare parts (World Bank, 2025).

The east hangs by radial threads

While the 400 kV spine handles national transit, the 225 kV sub-transmission network serves as the arterial system for regional distribution, and nowhere does it matter more than in Deir Ez-Zor and Al-Hasakah. The eastern provinces are resource-rich, holding the bulk of the country’s oil and gas reserves, yet they sit geographically peripheral to the primary load centres.

The circuits connecting the eastern gas fields to the rest of the country illustrate the weakness of a radial network. In a meshed grid, power can be rerouted through multiple paths. In a radial one, a single disabled substation in the eastern desert can plunge the entire region into darkness. The fragility reaches beyond lighting: the region’s water withdrawals increasingly depend on electricity-powered technologies, so a grid failure is a water failure too (IEA, 2024).

The topology also records a stark contrast between the densely integrated coastal and central regions and the sparsely connected east. That infrastructure gap traces deeper socio-economic divisions, and reconstruction efforts such as the World Bank’s Syria Electricity Emergency Project will need to address the imbalance directly, through urgent rehabilitation of damaged high-voltage lines and substations (World Bank, 2025).

The nodes that carry the load

No analysis of a transmission network is complete without the nodes that feed it. Syria’s generation mix is predominantly thermal and operates well below nameplate capacity, held down by fuel shortages and deferred maintenance. Each major plant is simultaneously a strategic asset and a point of exposure.

The Thawra Dam on the Euphrates Lake, with a design capacity of 824 MW, is a cornerstone of the country’s hydroelectric output, and its reliance on Euphrates water levels leaves it exposed both to climate-driven drought and to upstream water management decisions it does not control. In the thermal sector, the Deir Ali plant near Damascus is a load-bearing asset in the literal sense: a modern gas-fired facility supplying a significant portion of the capital’s baseload power, and dependent for it on gas pipeline infrastructure that makes it a high-value target for disruption (World Bank, 2025). Coastal thermal plants sit closer to fuel import routes and are correspondingly more resilient; inland plants tied to domestic gas fields carry the higher risk.

Rebuild the grid, not the vulnerability

The purpose of visualising what exists is to see clearly what must be built. The current grid is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, with renewables beyond large hydro contributing only a negligible share of generation. Modernisation will require the integration of solar PV, which could improve resilience in post-conflict areas precisely because it bypasses the weakened transmission corridors (IEA, 2024). The existing high-voltage infrastructure could serve as the foundation for that transition, provided significant investment goes into grid-stabilising technologies and the rehabilitation of the 400 kV interconnectors (World Bank, 2025).

The map’s lesson is blunt. Rebuilding the network line for line would rebuild the vulnerability pylon for pylon. The task is not to restore the single spine but to stop the grid depending on one: mesh the east, harden the interconnectors, and let distributed generation shorten the distance between power and the people who need it. The nervous system here is a metaphor, but only partly. A state can be given a stronger spine. It cannot stand without one.

References

• International Energy Agency (2024). The Future of Electricity in the Middle East and North Africa. Paris: IEA Publications. Available at: https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-electricity-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa (Accessed: 6 March 2026).

• World Bank (2024). Syria – Electricity Transmission Network (GeoJSON Data). Washington, DC: World Bank Energy Data Platform. Available at: https://energydata.info/dataset/syria-electricity-transmission-network (Accessed: 24 May 2024).

• World Bank (2025). Syria Electricity Emergency Project (P511407): Project Appraisal Document. Washington, DC: World Bank Group. Available at: https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-reports/documentdetail/099060625055567160/p511407-afa010d5-6fc0-4c0d-859d-79b01a31c3f5 (Accessed: 6 March 2026).