New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Secretariat Prof. Mosad Elmissiry said that southern African countries should have enough energy to capacitate the projected demand required to sustain the region’s multitude of energy needs in seven years.
The current estimated availability of energy in southern Africa is 46,449 MW – just shy of the remaining 1,272 MW needed to fulfill the region’s maximum demand with about 10% safety reserve. The Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) currently has 12 energy generation and transmission projects in the pipeline which were presented at the Energy Investors Round Table Conference held in Livingstone, Zambia from July 15-17.
Local energy expert and managing director of Casmic Energy, Saul Hlambelo said he was skeptical of such an aggressive forecast as more needs to be done before there is certainty.
Hlambelo said the fact that South Africa is developing one power station which will generate about 4,800 MW, which will be the biggest in southern Africa, is an indication that demand will be high in the coming years. He said construction has already started at Medupi power plant. “It has eight machines or generators which will produce about 600 MW of electricity each.”
“Assuming that these projects are implemented according to schedule, we will have sufficient energy by 2016 to supply the current and expected increase in energy consumption levels,” says Elmissiry. However, he adds that this estimation does not include new rural electrification projects as it is measured upon the current consumption patterns with a modest GDP rate.
Hlambelo said there is still much more that needs to be done. “With the demand increasing, there is still a lot more that can be done. We need to develop electricity security to ensure that in future we do not face the same situations as now.”
Among the 12 generation and transmission projects presented for the SAPP meeting, there were eight power generation projects. The power generation projects selected came from Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. These are a combination of hydro and thermal driven initiatives that are already in advanced stages of planning. It is expected that the plants will produce between 120 MW and 2,400 MW each.