Advancing interconnecting power sharing option to meet West Africa energy needs

West African countries like Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria for decades grappled with challenges of electricity supply interruptions.

This has substantially impacted negatively on the year-round economic and social activities of their populations. This sparse electricity coverage and unreliable service exacerbates poverty conditions among citizens, and frustrates productivity and competitiveness of firms within the region.

It is against this perceived drawback that energy experts have made case for the restrategised power sharing via interconnecting lines saying this is critical area of development for West Africa.

They observe that interconnections grid sharing serves as modest transfer of a small amount of electricity from one country to another, or as ambitious as the full integration of the power systems and markets of all of the countries in a region.

According to them, “Whatever the scale, international power grid interconnections can help to contribute toward the process of sustainable development”.

“Grid interconnections can help to increase the supply and/or reliability of electricity for use in education, employment generation, health care, and many other development related activities, and can contribute toward the formation of competitive markets for electricity on national and regional scales, helping to potentially reduce the cost of electricity to developing economies”.

Analysts are of the opinions that interconnection is the only way West Africa is going to be able to move forward with regards to energy development.

Recent report indicate that Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has a commissioned interconnecting lines that connected the grids of Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Nigeria in line with the energy objectives of its member countries, who are keen to ensure the reliability of the electricity supply as well as the optimisation of production costs within the sub-region.

According to industry close watchers, while interconnection via critical infrastructure is ideal in the long run, individual countries within the West Africa region should take the opportunity to develop their own locally-produced power to maintain a certain level of independence as this will provide energy security for many African countries.

They argue that some areas government and private sector in the rejoin should be looking at developing is the area of biomass from their agricultural sector, adding that mini-grids will also help to build energy security and reduce the need for expensive transmission and distribution infrastructure.

For Nigeria, where electric power is one of the main and foremost development priorities. However analysts insist that Nigeria’s own power shortages are yet to be fully tackled as the country generates barely some 4,000 megawatts of power compared to an estimated national demand of 10,000-12,000 megawatts, a situation which has resulted in frequent and unpredictable load-shedding and a heavy reliance on generators by consumers.

Nigeria’s energy concerns are imbedded in fixing the power value chain as transmission; distribution and generation need to work effectively to achieve results. Currently, over 90 per cent of industrial and a significant number of residential consumers in the country own generators.

J.O. Ayodele, a Technical Service professional in one of his power sector presentation was quoted to have said the primary reason for developing an electricity grid interconnection between countries is to reduce the overall combined economic costs of supplying electricity services in the interconnected countries as well as increase reliability.

According to him, “There are also potentially many indirect economic benefits of a grid interconnection for one or more of the countries involved, as well as potential indirect economic costs.

“The pooling of resources and the interconnection of isolated electric power systems allow optimum use of available resources”. He said.

“Improved electric power systems reliability will foster an increase in quality of service and a reduction in power interruptions that too often lead to productivity losses in the commercial and industrial sectors, affecting average regional manufacturing costs and, finally, the national gross domestic product (GDP)” he said.

By KELECHI EWUZIE