Regional power generation could save Africa $2bn a year

| Wednesday August 18, 2010 00:00

Despite its large hydropower potential, of about 100 000 MW, Africa remained behind all other regions in terms of harnessing this potential, Alavian told the Hydropower Africa conference in Johannesburg.

The continent, with its lack of electricity generation capacity, had a huge power investment requirement.Energy availability in Africa remained pitifully low, while power remained expensive.  This put a brake on the continent's economic growth and competitiveness, said Alavain.

He added that the continent needed to boost its generation capacity by about 7 000 MW a year and power connections by about five-million a year to keep up with demand.  Regional development of hydropower projects could assist Africa in expanding its generation capacity.  Alavian highlighted that most countries in Africa were too small to generate hydropower efficiently.

More than 20 countries had a population of less than five-million people, while another more than 20 countries had economies smaller than $5-million. Further, Africa had 60 international river basins.

Any upstream decisions could also potentially impact on downstream operations on the same river system if proper interregional discussions were not held, said Alavian.

However, in many cases, critical transmission links for the trade of regional power were missing.

Regional power trading could help to reduce costs and facilitate a shift to cleaner energy forms, including hydropower, he said.  Meanwhile, Nelisiwe Magubane, director-general of South Africa's Department of Energy, said that the hydropower potential in Africa could not be underestimated at this critical time in the continent's development.

She noted that while the capital cost of establishing hydropower plants were sometimes considered prohibitive, one had to look at the much lower operating costs than that of other energy sources.  She emphasised the importance of government's allowing private sector participating in the power sector, in the form of independent power producers or public-private partnerships.

This idea was shared by Uganda Electricity Generation Company chairperson, Sandy Tickodri-Togboa, who told delegates that the private sector should not try to develop hydropower projects on their own and that governments could assist by taking on some of the larger risks to building such projects.

Further, he highlighted that there was criticism from some that hydropower projects should not be built on a continent with water scarcity problems. But Tickodri-Togboa said that Africa's problem was not water scarcity, but rather water delivery infrastructure shortcomings.  There were many large rivers and bodies of water on the continent, but there was little infrastructure, and investment in infrastructure, to deliver the water to where it was needed.(Engineeringnews)