Policy and Governance Centre Executive Director Marriot Nyangu has urged the Government to tackle barriers to energy efficiency investment in order to unleash clean energy potential in Zambia.
He says he is happy that Zambia set a goal for universal electricity access for all Zambians by 2030 but was quick to mention that evidence on the ground shows that it is unattainable.
Dr. Nyangu says Zambia’s power demand forecast by ZESCO, shows a severe and immediate shortfall in supply, if the new mining and industrial loads begin to occur at the pace ZESCO currently expects.
He called for greater efforts as Government expects to bring online additional megawatts of solar, hydro, and thermal power through 2030.
The Public Policy and Governance Specialist notes that solar usage has remained relatively low due to high initial cost but that it is a cost-effective method for rural electrification which helps improve access for all though development of the country’s solar resource is still relatively slow.
He urges the New Dawn Government to take advantage of the energy sector as Zambia has an estimated large-hydro power potential of 6,000MW, of which less than 2,000MW has been harnessed.
Dr. Nyangu proposes that expanded coal mining can boost the manufacturing of carbon dioxide, which is used in the manufacture of carbonate beverages, and production of sulphuric and nitric acid used in agricultural and mining sectors.
What are these barriers?
@1 De Javu, one of them is the Law that declares Zesco as the single buyer of electricity. If Zesco doesn’t buy your power or it defaults as usual then you’ll have difficulties. If you target for example Chama town and set up a solar farm, you can’t sell your power to consumers directly because the current Law doesn’t allow you. Zesco’s inability to pay for power is suffocating independent power producers like Lunsemfwa Hydro and Maamba. The 2 solar plants in the Lusaka Economic Zone can supply electricity to surrounding areas at rates lower than Zesco but they’re fettered
In principle Nyangu is correct. But even he doesn’t understand what the underlying problems are. You can construct all the hydro, solar, geo, nuclear and whatever plants you want – but you would STILL need to totally refurbish and upgrade the electricity grid: the transmission lines, substations and lower voltage distribution grids. The existing grid is fifty years out of date, totally obsolete and will take many years and even more millions of dollars to get ready to accept power from any plant. And there is nobody in the ministry of energy – let alone Zesco – who’s got ANY idea what needs to be done!
#2 & 3 You present very valid points. How did we find ourselves in this situation?
In my personal opinion we have alot of competent and experience personal in these institutions responsible but what is impeding progress in that regard as #2 and 3 have explained is that there is just too much politics involved in this. If we put politics aside and be technical about these issues you would see a tremendous amount of progress that would actually even help the institutions to meet the demand in a case that the new mining and industrial loads begin to occur. The world is changing and going the coal route is not something that we should be able to embrace now best we focus on sustainable ways of power generation, something we can pass on to our future generation.
#4 Deja Vu – how we got here? That’s easy: corruption and incompetent governments. Zesco management was and is appointed for being somebody’s friend, not for knowing anything about energy and power. We even had some pastor as Zesco MD a few years ago. Ditto for the government: remember Dora Siliya as minister of energy? Appointments like that don’t help. Bally fired Zesco board and appointed amateurs. Today’s minister of energy has no experience in the sector either, and has not achieved anything in the seven months in power. Now they’re looking for a consultant – but they only want Zambians. Maybe they need to look a bit further…….
And there are cost-effective solutions, like Rwanda has shown us. By installing multiple (hundreds) smaller solar plants (not larger than 10MW) at the 11kV level, distributed over the country, one doesn’t need to look at major upgrades at transmission level 33-88kV or higher. Also by installing larger plants (100MW+) at strategic locations e.g
floating solar parks close to Kariba Dam – where there is ample transmission line capacity already – you can have something going in less than six months.
If you want to discuss technical details email to [email protected]
#6 No Corruption Zambia. Just like water utilities whose employees want to operate from their offices instead of checking physically what is going on. Result is to send fanthom bills on email.
@ number 7 that is a valid point but I think there would be other control and protection challenges to the power system if such action was to be taken drastically. If not, then we would all be foolish not to take such a course of action given the challenges we have in our energy sector moreso that we have a country like Rwanda as alluded to do benchmarking.