The Efficiency of Distributed Power Generation in Ethiopia

The Efficiency of Distributed Power Generation in Ethiopia
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The Efficiency of Distributed Power Generation in Ethiopia
Ethiopia Energy Situation
According to developmental statistics, Ethiopia is ranked among the world’s least developed countries. The country has approximately 34% of the total population (estimated at 100million) live in poverty. The country similarly records one of the world’s lowest rates to access of the modern-day services used in energy; the primary energy supply is based on biomass. Ethiopia records approximately 92.4% of its energy supply on waste and biomass, whereas oil marks about 5.7%, then hydropower at 1.6%. Biomass and waste from the primary energy sources used in the country. Since 2005, the country has been listed among countries with the fastest growing economy at an average of 10.8%. Ethiopia has put in place measures to stir its climate-resilient development by 2015, and it marked the first developing country in the world to submit to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) (Hoeltl et al., 2018). Hence, Ethiopia takes up the lead role in climate policy on climate change for vulnerable countries.
Identification of System Vulnerabilities in the Ethiopian Electric Power System
The Ethiopian Electric Power operated and managed the national interconnected systems of power with geographically and dispersed loads, complex systems of transmission, and generators. In the recent past, the country has experienced an increased load demand as a result of rural industrialization and electrification. Ethiopia has thus forced its power system to spread, more frequent widely, and long lasting power shortages across the country. The identification of system vulnerabilities in the country is normally the first step in taking in the direction of curbing the occurrence of incidences, such as blackouts in the country. The assessment of vulnerabilities is calculated using the active voltage performance index (PIV) as well as the power performance index (PIp). The indices identified to provide a direct platform to compare the comparative severity of voltage profiles and the various line outages on loads of systems (Tikuneh & Worku, 2018). Moges Alemu and Getachew Biru, through the indices used to calculate the system vulnerability, indicates that a number of serious line outages include the lines that interconnect centers with high load (the Central regions and Addis Ababa) with the other regional systems of power. The high load centers consist of vulnerable network buses in admiration of the violations of voltage limits.
Ethiopia has experienced vigorous growth in the electricity sector over the past decade. Between 2012 and 2016, the country through the Ethiopian Electricity Power (EEP) has recorded an increased number of electricity consumers to four million from two million consumers. The increase in the number of consumers of the past decade has constantly caused significant constrictions to the Ethiopian Electric Power (EEP). Electricity generation has been a top agenda for the Ethiopian government in terms of energy development. Still, the weakness in the transmission network strategy does not receive the due attention it deserves. The weaknesses experienced affect the economy, the government, the consumers, as well as society’s social welfare. The fault experienced in the systems of transmission threatens the setups of the power systems. Therefore, the vulnerability of the national grid system has been recorded to be on the rise over time.
The vulnerabilities experienced in Ethiopia have grown worse as a result of explicit and implicit reasons; nevertheless, the reasons leading to vulnerabilities have not been identified concretely; thus, the frequent cases recorded about total and partial blackouts across the country. The indices used in the analysis of vulnerabilities make an assessment of various symptoms of stress in the system, such as overloads and voltage limit violations. The process thus comprises the study of the effects of system component elimination, in particular, the bus voltages and the power flow. The components herein can range from transmission lines, generators, and transformers. The identification and ranking of serious line outages are performed by using the performance indices; voltage performance index (PIV) as well as the power performance index (PIp) (Tikuneh & Worku, 2018). Therefore, network vulnerabilities are assessed in reference to the number of outages the result to overload, the number of outages that result in voltage limit violation of buses, and the highest percentage load of components used. Analysis indicates that the occurrences of network vulnerabilities in relation to element overloading and voltage violation of buses occur as a result of components and buses found in centers with high load.
The Current and Future States of Ethiopia’s Energy Sector and Potential for Green Energy
Countries in the Sub-Sahara face numerous challenges in regards to planning on the future energy sector. In particular, the Sub-Saharan rural regions experience shortages of energy supply since the countries experience limited technical and financial support, the absence of grid facilities, over-exportation of energy, as well as mounting pressure experienced from foreign institutions. Despite Ethiopia becoming one of the leading energy producers in the region, it similarly experiences numerous problems like other African countries. Ethiopia has a huge potential in renewable energy, and despite being under-exploited, renewable sources of energy can provide energy access to the rural population (Khan & Singh, 2017). It is thus important that the country focus on the new subsidies and policy frameworks for the generation of renewable energy, provision of technical training, motivational awareness, improvement of managerial skills and efficiency of organizations, putting in place financial strategies for new projects and initiation of simple ICTs articulated to programs used in mobile banking to be improved to accomplish sustainable growth in the country as well as 100% access to energy by improving the production of renewable energy.
The Ethiopian government intends to increase the access of electricity to 60% from 24% by 2040. Besides, the country aims to improve the already existing sources of energy. The government is dedicated to achieving the energy sector set goals hence seeking financial support from China as well as the World Bank conventional resources. The government has created a program, the Universal Electricity Access Program, to ensure that electricity is supplied to the rural areas adequately. The program is set to cost approximately $920 million. The country has a huge Interconnected Power Supply (ICS) that is composed of one geothermal, thirteen hydro-electric stations, six diesel standby, and three wind farms.
Ethiopia currently has approximately twenty-three power plants operating and conducting energy generation through wind energy, diesel sources, and hydropower. In the 2015-16 financial year, energy production was approximated at around 10311807 MWh. Presently, the country has installed power generation capacity of approximately 4238MW and hydro-electric power plants cover about 90% of the total energy production, followed by wind, diesel, and geothermal power plants. Despite the high possibility of renewable energy generation, Ethiopia is affected by financial constraints as well as other factors. To achieve the set energy sector goals, Ethiopia needs to exploit the huge potential in renewable energy generation through support in the fields of biomass, wind, solar, and geothermal.
The sources of energy can be implemented by Ethiopia to carter to long-term energy potentials for the international and local industries’ energy trade (Khan & Singh, 2017). By the end of the decade, the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation was set to achieve 75% energy access through its various development plans. The generation of energy through renewable sources continues to be on the rise in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian government should thus formulate regulations and policy frameworks to facilitate the production of energy to its people.
Feasibility Study of Small Hydro/PV/Wind Hybrid System for off-Grid Rural Electrification in Ethiopia
Globally, Ethiopia is one of the least developed nations, and its total access to electric power is approximately 16%. Statistics indicate that nearly 85% of Ethiopia’s population resides in a place with less than 2% electric power accessibility. An instance of the places is the Dejen district, with about twenty-three villages and a population of 107,710. About fourteen villages in the Dejen district are found on the upper side of the Blue Nile hence making it difficult to conduct electrification through the grid system. The non-electrified locations use diesel power for pumping and milling, kerosene for lighting, dry cells used in radios while biomass used for cooking purposes. Observations indicate that the country has not provided adequate and necessary required resources such as solar, small-scale hydro, and wind energy in the Dejen district.
The area consists of identified six different sites with small-scale hydropower generation potential. The hydro potential sites are analysed using the data obtained from the Ministry of Water Resources (WoWR) as well as with the help of Geographic Information System (Abaye & Paliwal, 2018). The country uses information from sources such as NASA and metrological data from the National Meteorological Agency (NWA) to make approximations of wind and solar energy potentials. The estimate as well covers the electric load of the community’s basic needs such as television, radio, water pumps, lighting, electric baker, and flour mills. The estimation done considers health facilities and primary schools as part of the community. The hybrid system is analyzed through the sensitivity and optimization of the HOMER energy.
As a result of renewable resources dynamics, the exploitation of a specific type of renewable energy leads to in operation at certain periods of time and seasons and superfluous lifecycle and operational costs, and oversizing components. The limitations can otherwise be curbed through the formation of a hybrid system, which consists of the combination of two or more resources used in the generation of renewable energy. The hybrid systems include wind turbines and photovoltaic systems (Hailu Kebede & Bekele Beyene, 2018). The hybrid system provides enriched dependability and delivers an improved energy service equal to a single source of energy. Hybrid systems that utilize solar and wind energy are designed for the treatment of wastewater, rural electrification, and irrigation.
A Review on the Recent Progress Made on Solar Photovoltaic in Selected Countries of Sub-Saharan Africa
The effects of greenhouse gases as a result of the over-reliance on oil has become a threat globally. The problem is presently curbed through the encouragement of renewable energy generation. The aim is to provide a wide range of renewable sources of energy to contribute to the energy mix globally. The encouragement of renewable energy also helps to give solutions to the unsustainable production of electricity, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa (Wirba et al., 2017). Solar energy is one of the renewable energy sources in Sub-Saharan Africa with a high potential for exploitation.
Photovoltaic systems electrical efficiency is dependent on the quality and type of Photovoltaic cells, the materials used to make the cells, the components as well as the length and intensity of sunlight received by the Photovoltaic system. The variation of the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface depends on the season, location, weather conditions, and time of the day. The Solar Photovoltaic systems provide economical and technological practicable ways used in electricity generation all over the world. Despite the sub-Saharan African countries having numerous unrealized energy generation potentials to provide renewable resources with little carbon emissions, a larger number of its population still undergo experience energy shortages. Senegal marks the first African country to demonstrate development, enabling policies (Pillot et al., 2019). The country has passed energy law that portrays solar energy as the main source of renewable energy. Sub-Saharan African countries have put in place factors such as research programs, levels of solar radiation, installed capacity, Photovoltaic solar percentages, and renewable energy policies to cover for the future energy mix. Scaling up solar Photovoltaic is a solution to facilitate energy mix development in the sun-Saharan countries.
 
References
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