Page 15 - AfrElec Week 12

AfrElec
NEWS IN BRIEF
AfrElec
Kariba was generating a meagre 390MW, leaving the country with a huge electricity shortfall.
The struggling power utility now feels that solar power plants across 10 sites to be developed by private investors would end load-shedding by 2022.
Ikhupuleng Dube, the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) systems development manager, unveiled the ambitious plan at the recent International Renewable Energy Conference and Expo organised by The Standard in Victoria Falls.
Dube said ZETDC, a Zesa subsidiary, would award tenders for the projects by November this year and expects construction to take between nine months and a year.
He said the identification of sites for the solar projects would be completed by mid- next month.
“Most of the plants should be in by June 2022. The estimated costs are $1mn per MW,” Dube revealed. “This means total costs for the 500MW would be about $500mn.”
Zesa has been struggling to finance electricity imports to plug the local shortages.
The power utility owes South African
and Mozambican power utilities millions of dollars and in turn local consumers owe Zesa over $2bn.
Dube said they expected private investors to fund the solar projects.
“Financing will be raised by private investors who will bid for each site with capacities ranging from 20MW to 50MW depending on the current demand at each site,” he said.
GRID
ABB Power Grids to enable
major grid expansion in
Egypt
Egypt’s Toshka 2 substation is to feature six bays of 500 kV gas-insulated switchgears (GISs) supplied by ABB Power Grids in a bid to improve cross-border capacity with Sudan.
The project will contribute towards the
country’s transformation to become a regional hub for electricity exchange with Africa and Europe.
For the strategic expansion of its Toshka
2 substation, manufacturing company El Sewedy Electric T&D contracted ABB to deliver high-voltage gas-insulated switchgears (GIS) and shunt reactors to ensure reliable power supply.
This expansion, in the second phase of the 300MW electric interconnection project between Egypt and Sudan, is an important step to transform Egypt into a regional hub for electricity exchange with African and European countries.
“ABB Power Grids is working with El Sewedy Electric T&D for many years and, once again, we proved our expertise in designing a complex technological solution in a very short time,” said Mohamed Hosseiny, Country Managing Director, Egypt & North Africa, ABB Power Grids.
“This project is a key milestone in our strategy to expand its positioning across the whole continent.”
ABB BILLING
Ghana launches mobile app for power payments
Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has advised its customers to use its mobile app to buy and pay for their electricity bills.
The directive, according to the ECG is in compliance with President Akufo-Addo’s measures to help curtail the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the country.
Ghana has so far recorded 68 positive cases of the COVID 19.
In an interview on an Accra based radio station Joy News ECG strategic business unit manager for the Ashanti Region, David Asamoah, said measures have been put in place to prevent customers from coming to the office to purchase electricity.
“So what we have done is that we launched
an application, it was the Vice President who did the launch last month (February 18, 2020), since then, we’ve tried to educate our customers that you don’t necessarily need to come to the office to do a transaction,” Mr Asamoah said.
“The first thing we’ve done is that if you are using credit meter, you only need your account number and then once you download the ECG mobile app, you can download on Google play store,” he added.
Asamoah added that the ECG only faces issues with load management during nighttime.
“I want to say that if you talk about our transformers by our policies that we are implementing now, every transformer is supposed to be loaded to 70 per cent.... when the people stay home and they even switch on the suppress load,.....our load has always been big at night, now that they are home using the power in the day we don’t have a problem at all, normally at night, that is when we get challenges...,” he explained.
DEBT REPAYMENT
World Bank, IMF call to
action for debt of IDA
countries
The World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund have called on lenders to suspend debt repayments for the world’s poorest countries, many of which are in Africa.
The coronavirus outbreak is likely to have severe economic and social consequences for International Development Association (IDA) countries, home to a quarter of the world’s population and two-thirds of the world’s population living in extreme poverty.
With immediate effect—and consistent with national laws of the creditor countries— the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund call on all official bilateral creditors to suspend debt payments from IDA countries that request forbearance.
This will help with IDA countries’ immediate liquidity needs to tackle challenges posed by the coronavirus outbreak and allow time for an assessment of the crisis impact and financing needs for each country.
We invite G20 leaders to task the WBG and the IMF to make these assessments, including identifying the countries with unsustainable debt situations, and to prepare a proposal
for comprehensive action by official bilateral
Week 12 26•March•2020
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