Africa yearns for electricity

Author: Jacob Klimstra Senior Energy and Engine Consultant

Introduction: electricity use and the economy are related

GrossDomesticProduct(PPP)percapitaperyearin2009(year 2000US$)

40000 35000 30000 25000 20000 15000 10000

Trendline R2 =0.95 Europe LatinAm. China MiddleEast Asia(exChina)

0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000 12000

NorthAmerica

World average

5000

Africa

0 14000

Electricityusepercapitaperyear(kWh)

Figure 1: The relationship between electricity use and gross domestic product in the world (data IEA)

When comparing electricity use and the economy in different regions in the world, one will notice a strong the relationship between the two. Figure 1 gives the gross domestic product (GDP) in Purchasing Power Parity per person per year as a function of per capita electricity use for the major areas of the world. The red trend line in gure 1 has a high correlation coefficient of 0.95, meaning a close to linear relationship between GDP and electricity use. The slight deviations from this trend line can be easily explained by e.g. on the one hand energy wastefulness in the USA and in the oil states in the Middle East and on the other a more preservative attitude in Europe. Also the local climate plays a role. In economically developed countries, about one third of total electricity use is end consumption in households. Two thirds of electricity supply is used in industry and by services for wealth creation. Use of electricity drastically increases productivity per person. Africa as a continent scores lowest in electricity use per capita as well as in GDP per capita. Consequently, in order to become globally competitive and to abolish poverty, Africa needs substantially more electric energy. The average electricity consumption per person per year on the African continent is about 500 kWh. That is only 20% of the world average of 2500 kWh. Yet, even this low electricity consumption is not representative for the majority of Africans. If electricity use in the North of Africa and the Republic of South Africa is subtracted from Africa total, a very low 180 kWh per capita per year results for East, Central and West Africa (Figure 2). This means that some 80% of African people use less electricity than 7 % of the world average. This equals a meagre 1.5% of what the average North American citizen uses. A large fraction of the African population is not even connected to an electricity grid at all.
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finalelectricityusepercapita(kWh/annum)
600

Africatotal
500 400 300 200 100 0 1050

WORLD: 2500kWh/cap/year

AfricatotalminusRep.SouthAfrica AfricatotalminusRep.SouthAfrica minusNorthAfrica

1000

950

900

850

800

750

Population(millions)

Figure 2: The differences in electricity use per person on the African continent.

A few things are obvious now:

zz Africa

is not Africa total. Electricity use per capita in the countries in the North of Africa as well as in the Republic of South Africa is much higher than in the majority of countries in Africa. the productivity and living standards for Africa in total to a global competitive level requires at least a fefold increase in average electricity supply per capita. the bulk of the African population, at least a ten to twentyfold increase in average power supply is needed in order to warrant reasonable living conditions and economic competitiveness with the rest of the world.

zz Raising

zz For

It should be noted that for a more comfortable life in homes and communities, a residential electricity supply of 500 kWh per person per year might suffice. However, much more electricity is needed to boost economic productivity with modern industries and services. Treatment and chilling of valuable agricultural products, powering mining activities, manufacturing, data handling and communication are only possible with ample electricity supply.

Example Ethiopia
60 50 kilowatthour/capita/year 40 30 20 10 0 2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

year
Figure 3: The positive trend in electricity use per capita in Ethiopia (data IEA)

Ethiopia is a country with a positive trend in electricity supply. Yet, the current per capita electricity supply at a level of 50 kWh per year is amongst the lowest in the world. Fortunately, electricity production in the country is growing rapidly with some 7% per year. This is already quite an achievement. However, for reasons of economic competitiveness, average electricity use per capita in the country should be increased from the current 50 kWh per year to at least a modest 1000kWh per year. If this will be done in say 15 years, the annual increase should be around 22%. Even with such a high growth rate, the per person power supply in Ethiopia will ultimately still be less than 1/3 of the world average. Many scenarios indicate that global electricity use is expected to double in 20 years time, so the average value goes up.

3000 2500 kWh/capita/year 2000 1500 1000 500 0 2005 Ethiopia kWh/cap trend year 2009 world average Ethiopia target for 2025

2010

2015 year

2020

2025

Figure 4: The growth trend of electricity use in Ethiopia in a global perspective

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The question is how Ethiopia can rapidly produce more electricity and distribute it to the population. The country needs the capital for the investments as well as sufficient primary energy for the power plants. EEPCO, the national electricity company of Ethiopia, has prepared plans which are fully in line with the previous analysis. The country is increasing electricity exports to neighbouring countries Kenya, Djibouti, Sudan and South Sudan, in order to generate income for further investments in the power sector. Loans from the World Bank and the African Development Bank of 1.3 billion US$ are used to build substantially more hydro capacity (Blue Nile 6000 MW, Gibe III 1870 MW) as well as wind farms and geothermal generators. Ethiopia has the highest potential for hydropower in Africa. Plans are to add 37 GW of renewable generating capacity in a 25 years time span. To provide the 85 million inhabitants with 1000 kWh of electricity per person per year, one needs 20 GW generating capacity running at a capacity factor of 50%. The extra generating capacity can be used as a sustainable source of money from electricity exports. The EEPCO plans are great and exactly what the country needs. However, plans are always accompanied by complicating factors. To mention a few:
zz Ethiopia zz A

has a population growth of 3% per year, which accelerates demand;

loan of 1.3 billion US$ for 8 GW capacity equals already some 4% of Ethiopian GDP; dependence on hydro can be risky with aberrations in annual rainfall.

zz High

Nevertheless, the planned increase in power production is crucial for lifting the Ethiopian economy up to a competitive and sustainable level. Ethiopia is blessed with so many renewable resources. For an economic hydropower potential of 160TWh per year, an annual electricity production of 2000 kWh per capita is possible. If 1000 kWh per capita is enough in a sustainable society with a good climate, the country can export 80 TWh per year. For an electricity export price of 10 US$cts/kWh, that yields 8 billion US$ per year. On the long run, this offers great expectations for Ethiopia.

ENERGY SOURCES FOR ELECTRICITY PRODUCTION IN AFRICA

HydropowerAfrica

(sourceHydropower&DamsWorldAtlas2009)

180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0

economicannual potential(TWh) Currentproduction (year2008,TWh)

Figure 5: Hydropower use and potential in Africa.

Many other African countries do not have such natural resources as Ethiopia and therefore still depend on fuel for electricity generation. For Africa total, 40% of electricity is produced by coal, 30% by natural gas, 15% by hydro and 12% by oil. The contribution from bio fuels, wind and solar based energy to electricity production is negligible.

26 1354 1675 12806 769 101257

GWh

coal&peat oil gas

250089

biofuels nuclear hydro

185582

geothermal solarPV
79217

wind

Figure 6: African electricity production according to source (year 2009, data IEA)

Figure 6, which gives the energy sources for electricity production in Africa total, is again not representative for the bulk of African countries. Figure 7 shows that the Republic of South Africa is responsible for almost all of the coal applications, while North Africa is generating its electricity primarily with gas and oil. Hydro power is the major electricity source for the large remaining part of Africa. The bar in gure 7 indicating the energy sources for electricity for the energy-deprived group of 780 million people is fully dominated by it. Much hydro power is based on run of the river systems that show a high volatility in output depending upon rainfall. Reservoir-based systems have a much better ability for dispatching power according to demand.
GWh
700000

1000millionpeople

600000

500000

wind

950millionpeople
400000

solarPV geothermal hydro nuclear biofuels naturalgas oil coal&peat

300000

200000

780millionpeople

100000

0 Africatotal AfricaminusRepSouthAfr. AfricaminusRepS.A.minus NorthAfrica

Figure 7: The large differences in primary energy type for power production sources between the African areas

Since most countries are not blessed with the natural resources that e.g. Ethiopia has, other solutions have to be found to increase electricity production. A simple solution could be to build a transmission and distribution system for natural gas throughout Africa and use gas from the large reserves Nigeria and North Africa as a fuel for power plants. However, most African countries cannot yet afford the price for the gas that Europe and Asia are willing to pay. Therefore, the gas does not go to East, Central and West Africa. Using the huge coal resources in Africa is another option but that creates conicts with aspirations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the world.

MajorgasresourcesinAfrica(Tm3)
16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

conventional unconventional

Nigeria

Algeria

Egypt

Libya

SouthAfrica

Figure 8: Major natural gas reserves in Africa (T = tera = 1012; G = giga = 109) (data: The World Factbook, IEA and BP)

Example Nigeria Nigeria is in a favourable position to have natural gas for supplying its economy with electricity. At the moment, the countrys GDP (PPP) of 1190 US$ per capita per year and its electricity use of 120 kWh per capita per year are still in the same low range as that in e.g. Ethiopia. Exploiting the 7 Tm3 conventional gas reserves in Nigeria of over a time span of 50 years means that 140 Gm3 per year can be used. This situation can be compared with that in the Netherlands, where a gas eld of approximately 2.8 Tm3 has been producing between 60 and 90 Gm3 per year during a time span of 35 years. About half of that was exported by pipelines to neighbouring countries. If Nigeria would use 50 Gm3 gas per year for electricity production, it would yield some 250 TWh per year, or some 1600 kWh per capita per year. That would fully change the economy and the living standards in the country. The rest of the potential gas production, some 90 Gm3 per year, can be used for exports. The country exports already 25 Gm3 per year as LNG. The unconventional gas resources in Nigeria are estimated to cover another 7 Tm3.

SubSaharannaturalgasreservesexcludingNigeria(Gm3)
300 250 200 150 100 50 0
135 127 100 56 28 28 28 24 22 270

6,5

5,6

Figure 9: Sub-Saharan natural gas reserves excluding Nigeria

Natural gas reserves in Africa excluding Nigeria and North Africa are limited (see gure 9 and compare with gure 8). South Africa seems to have promising resources of shale gas and coal-bed methane. Yet, some countries, such as Angola, Cameroon, Mozambique and Namibia have interesting gas reserves that might be used intelligently for enhancing electricity production. Burning that gas in large base-load power stations is not wise. The technical life of a large power station is at least 30 years. As an example, the 100 billion m3 of natural gas of Namibia can fuel a 2000 MW base load power plant for 30 years, but then all the gas is gone. It is much wiser to use the gas with exible power stations as a back-up battery for intermittent renewable sources (long-term battery). In the more distant future, say around the year 2050, a large proportion of renewable electricity sources will dominate power production. One can already notice early developments of this in Germany and Denmark. Africa will not be an exception. The costs of solar PV panels are rapidly decreasing and the African continent is blessed with much sunshine.

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A STRATEGY FOR INCREASING ELECTRICTY SUPPLY IN AFRICA

Africa has a great potential for renewable energy, especially for solar PV systems, hydro power and geothermal sources. It is the chicken and egg syndrome that hampers a quick implementation: the continent cannot earn the capital required for power production equipment because of its low productivity resulting from a lack of electric energy. Therefore, as much as possible external support for the continent must be directed towards providing the economy with electric power. In addition, much of the proceedings from the African boom in selling minerals to the rest of the world should be used for enhancing electricity production. Investing in power plants in Africa can even be quite lucrative. There is much suppressed demand for electricity which means that newly build power capacity will quickly nd its customers. Many potential customers use small generators fuelled by petrol or diesel oil, which is less economic than electricity produced by an efficient power plant. Household members that spend hours per day in nding fuel for cooking would be happy to use efficient electric cookers. In dening a proper strategy for a rapid electrication of Africa, one has to take into account some characteristic boundary conditions:
zz The

existing low density of electricity use; transmission and distribution networks;

zz Limited zz Low

availability of local capital; manpower input preferred for enhancing employment; maintenance + repairs preferred; natural gas reserves only in North Africa and Nigeria;

zz Local zz Local

zz Substantial zz Natural zz Large zz Large

gas as back-up reserves in more countries;

potential for hydro power in some countries; potential for geothermal power and solar PV in many countries.

Approach:
zz Install

quality generating equipment with a relatively low price (such as gas-red modular generating units); generating equipment that can compensate for intermittent renewables (exibility); political stability for long-term Power Purchase Agreements;

zz Install

zz Create zz Avoid zz Avoid

excessive red tape;

excessively stringent emission regulations that may apply for a metropolis in the rich world; excellent reliability with multiple units in parallel;

zz Provide zz Avoid

the trap of installing only single large generating units.

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The solution Although Africa is still hesitant to implement solar PV (currently only 0.004% of electricity generated) because of the investment costs, its costs will soon be competitive. Batteries for storage to cover electricity demand when the sun does not shine are still prohibitively expensive, but expectations are that in some 20 years time affordable batteries have been developed. As a medium term solution, new exible power stations that will run on natural gas or even heavy fuel oil should therefore be installed for coping with the variability in demand and for their ability to compensate the variations in output of renewable energy sources. The experience in Germany, a country with relatively little sunshine, is already that solar and wind based generators drastically reduce the need for fuel-based generation on sunny and windy days. In Africa, fast backup systems will be needed during a few hours after sunset and at times with low rainfall. The back-up systems will need to have a very high ramp rate to cope with the rapid decline in solar PV output just before sunset (gures 10, 11).

1600 1400

POWER('MW')

1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 SOLAR DEMAND GENERATORS

TIMEoftheday(h)
Figure 10: High ramp rates needed for back-up generators for PV at sunset

100 90 80

Poweroutput(%)

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 0 60 120 180 240 300 360

gasengine GTCC steamplant

420

time(minute)

Figure 11: Comparison of the response rate to power demand of some generating systems.
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The backup power plants of the future have to run considerably less hours per year than the traditional power plants in the past. Coal-red and especially nuclear power plants are way too expensive to run limited hours and are not suitable to experience many starts and stops. The relatively low investment costs of gas and oil fuelled power plants result in low capital costs per kWh, even when running limited hours (gure 12).
30

RelativecapitalcostsperkWh

25 20 15 10 5 0

gasenginepowerplant coalfiredpowerplant nuclearpowerplant

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Utilisationfactor(%)
Figure 12: Effect of a reduced utilisation factor on capital costs per kWh

In case of much variability in power demand, generating systems with multiple units in parallel offer many advantages. Individual units can be switched off when their output is not needed instead of running at low load with low efficiency and high specic maintenance costs. This cascading way of operation is a key feature of SMART POWER GENERATION.
ultrareliableelectricitygridconnection

10

ultrareliablefuelsupply

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

fuelefficiency(%)

cascadingpowerplant singlegeneratingunit

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

180

Poweroutput(MW)
Figure 13: The high overall fuel efficiency of a cascading power plant
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Modern economies depend heavily on a reliable power supply. Black outs and brown outs hamper productivity and reduce product quality. Using the multiple generating units concept for power plants with an n+ 2 approach provides excellent reliability of power supply. This is especially the case in Africa, where transmission grids are often weak or even lacking. This high reliability can never be achieved with single big power plants. A reliability of 99% per generating unit is a practical technical standard for an individual generating unit. A system with 6 generators in parallel where 5 are able to carry the load (n+1) is already able to create an electricity supply reliability of 99.85%. One extra unit (n+2) can serve as reserve capacity when one of the others is undergoing maintenance. In the oppostite case with just a few large generators supplying to the grid, tripping of one unit will have too much impact on the grid and can easily cause a black out.

% of time insufficient power

100 10 1 0.1 0.01 0.001 0.0001 0.00001 .000001 0000001 1E-08 1E-09 1E-10 1E-11 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 1E-10 5 6 1.47015E-05 0.001940598 0.144089402

99.85395524

sufficient power

5.94E-08

number of units failing

Figure 14: Supply unavailability of a power plant based on multiple units.

The principle of power plants consisting of multiple units in parallel can be very advantegeous in e.g. Nigeria. A widespread gas-based power generating system there needs much exibility, especialy in the beginning. Gradual increases in power demand can be easily met by installing an extra identical generating unit. It is foreseen that even in Nigeria much solar PV will be installed resulting in high ramping rates for fuel-based generating equipment just before sunset. Such an approach might preserve much of the precious hydrocarbon resource as feedstock which can act as a battery for the future. Having ample access to electricity will lift the country permanently out of poverty.

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IN CONCLUSION
Removing poverty, famine, instability and conicts in Africa requires a substantial increase in electricity generation for the continent. The current average 200 kWh per capita per year in East, Central and West Africa has to be raised rapidly to at least 1000 kWh, with a further expansion on the longer term to 2500 kWh. Ultimately, electricty production has to be based on sustainable resources, as is the case in the rest of the world. However, to pull the continent out of the viscious circle of incompetitiveness caused by lack of electric power, a smart system based on exible power plants running on fuel is needed. Such generating systems quickly provide the population with the required power while it can eventually serve as a back-up system for renewable energy sources.

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10.2012 / Bocks Ofce / KTMP