A lively national debate has earnestly ensued about the suitability and cost-benefit considerations of a power pool. Some saw cost contradictions to mock the whole concept’s implementation, while others questioned government claims of power sufficiency to poke holes in the power pool. This article discards those misconceptions and emphasizes the advantages and disadvantages of a power pool. Here is my take.
Engineer Felchesmi Jossen Mramba, the permanent energy secretary, dilated on President Samia’s fiat that soon the Northern region will be hooked up with electricity from Ethiopia via Kenya. He expounded that it was cost-effective, would stabilize power availability in the area, and would reduce the dependency on the Southern region’s power supply, among other reasons.
Former leader of Act Wazalendo Zitto Kabwe seconded the move, albeit for different reasons. He said transmission losses would be curbed. He got it wrong. Electricity from Ethiopia will have more transmission losses than the ones experienced locally, presuming power transmission efficiency is the same in either case, though.
Others were against the move, citing we have a 400 KV transmission line that hooks Northern regions with the national power grid, so we don’t need a power pool! But what are the advantages and disadvantages of having a regional power pool seeing Tanzania is now part of the power pool of East and Southern African regions? Our power potentiality and constraints are really not the reasons for not having a regional power pool but are the very real thing of hooking up with the rest of the continent and beyond.
Power Pool: Advantages and Disadvantages.
Power Pool defined.
A “power pool” refers to a collaborative energy network where multiple electricity providers and consumers aggregate resources to enhance efficiency and reliability. Here are the pros and cons enunciated:
Advantages of a Power Pool.
- Enhanced Reliability & Redundancy.
Multiple power sources reduce the risk of outages. If one power generator fails, others compensate, ensuring continuous supply.
- Cost Efficiency.
Economies of scale lower operational and infrastructure costs. Shared resources reduce individual financial burdens.
- Competitive Pricing.
Market competition among providers can drive down prices, benefiting consumers.
- Environmental Sustainability.
Facilitates integration of renewable energy (e.g., solar, wind), reducing reliance on fossil fuels or water damming that are exposed to the vagaries of precipitation and mud sedimentation risks.
- Demand-Supply Balancing.
Smooth regional demand fluctuations by redistributing power across a broader grid. Peak hours may not necessarily lead to power shedding or hiking utility bills due to harnessing the power supply side to meet the demand side.
- Diverse Energy Mix.
Access to varied energy sources (hydro, solar, nuclear, wind, fossil, radio waves, etc) improves grid stability and resilience.
- Optimized Resource Use.
Efficient utilization of surplus energy from one region to meet deficits in another.
Disadvantages of a Power Pool.
- Management Complexity.
Coordinating multiple stakeholders (utilities, regulators, governments) can lead to logistical challenges, conflicts and dissatisfaction.
- Regulatory and Political Barriers.
Differing regulations across jurisdictions may cause conflicts. Political disputes can hinder cooperation or weaponize a regional power pool as a source of brandishing leverage to encroach on the sovereignty of another hostile nation sharing the same power pool.
- High Infrastructure Costs.
It requires robust transmission networks and smart grid technology, which are expensive to build and maintain. Corruption may render cooperation too expensive to explore and adopt.
- Transmission Losses.
Energy losses increase over long-distance transmission, reducing efficiency. Investment in transmission loss reductions may be difficult to distribute to recipient nations because such contracts were signed long ago, and room for renegotiation may not be available. Incentives to plug transmission losses may be few and far between, leading to ageing and decay that disrupts the whole arrangement of the power pool.
- Market Manipulation Risks.
Dominance by large players could lead to unfair pricing or supply control. Possibilities of monopoly and/ or the unfair practices of private sector players may sabotage and defeat goodwill behind power pool objectives.
- Dependency Risks.
Over-reliance on the pool may cause vulnerabilities if systemic failures occur (e.g., cyberattacks, grid collapses).
- Unequal Benefits.
Disparities in resource distribution or financial gains may create tensions among participants.
- Cybersecurity Threats.
Interconnected systems are more exposed to hacking and cyber threats.
Concluding remarks.
Power pools offer significant reliability, cost, and sustainability benefits but require careful management to address complexities, regulatory hurdles, and infrastructure demands. Success depends on collaboration, equitable governance, and investment in resilient systems.
Once Ethiopian power is pooled in Kenya, it becomes Kenyan power. However, through computation, how much of it has been used in Kenya determines how much is left for Tanzanian use.
It is not bad for us to tap into Ethiopian power because it enhances our own stability in power availability. Cases of overdependence on precipitation risks to secure power are partly tamed. The problem is that Ethiopian power generation relies on the same sources as the regional catchment basin. Therefore, if there’s rain scarcity in East Africa, our access to Ethiopian power will hit a snag.
Egypt has been complaining about the Ethiopian dam posing an existential threat to water availability in the Nile River, on which both Sudan and Egyot depend for irrigation and domestic and industrial use. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, formerly known as the Millennium Dam and sometimes called the Hidase Dam, is a gravity dam on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia. The dam is in the Benishangul-Gumuz Region of Ethiopia, about 14 km east of the border with Sudan.
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is designed to trap 100 years of sediment inflow. However, a lack of sediment data and rapid land degradation may result in higher sediment yields than expected. Reducing sediment inflow through watershed management is key to achieving long-term sustainability. Debre Yakob watershed demonstrates a successful example of economically self-supporting watershed management.
Constructed between 2011 and 2023, the dam’s primary purpose is electricity production to relieve Ethiopia’s acute energy shortage and to export electricity to neighbouring countries. With an installed capacity of 5.15 gigawatts, the dam is the largest hydroelectric power plant in Africa and among the 20 largest in the world.
Two killer assumptions have stalked the Ethiopian dam. The first killer assumption was the estimated flood storms and the responsive systems to cope with them. The contractor reassured and took care of this during construction. The emergency spillway located near the rock saddle dam saw the rim length increase from 300 m to 1,200 m to account for even the largest possible flood of the river.
The second killer assumption which remains unresolved is the structural integrity of the dam in context with the underlying rock basement to avoid the danger of a sliding dam due to an unstable basement. It was argued by the panel that the original structural investigations considered only a generic rock mass without taking special conditions like faults and sliding planes in the rock basement (gneiss) into account. The panel noted that there was indeed an exposed sliding plane in the rock basement, with the potential to cause a sliding process downstream.
The panel didn’t argue that a catastrophic dam failure with a release of dozens of cubic kilometres of water would be possible, probable or even likely, but did argue that the safety factor concerning avoiding such a catastrophic failure might be non-optimal in the case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. It was later revealed that the underlying basement of the dam was completely different from all expectations and did not fit the geological studies as the needed excavation works exposed the underlying gneiss. The engineering works had to be adjusted, with digging and excavating deeper than initially planned, which took extra time and capacity and required more concrete. The final engineering solution is impossible to assay to the extent that it has contained the natural structural anomalies caused by foundational weaknesses.
However, the beauty of the regional power pool cannot be assessed against the current major sources of power generation because all countries in the region have earmarked and prioritized power diversification. Therefore, in the short run, we may not be able to figure out the advantages of a regional power pool, but in the long run, once diversification kicks in, all the disadvantages of having a regional power pool will vanish or be contained.
The regional power pool’s biggest threat is endemic corruption. Power purchase agreements in Africa have caused this problem due to inflated power user costs. It is our politicians who are behind the artificially astronomical costs. For example, the wind turbine power generation in Kenya that has an installed capacity of 300 MW became a ripoff because of official graft. The production costs are too minuscule, yet the power purchase agreement left consumers paying through the nose. Efforts to renegotiate the lopsided contract have proven tricky. Most power purchase agreements are in US dollars. When factoring in the devaluation of the local currencies, the burden to consumers is unbearable and unacceptable.
Regional power pools have many hurdles to navigate, but if those sticky issues are sincerely resolved, they can be a powerful catalyst in speeding up regional development. Still, suppose the lowered costs of power generation don’t trickle down to the consumers. In that case, regional power pool agreements can be a source of discontentment, leading to discontinuation or a temporary pause until the disagreements are sorted out.
Hydropower generation costs are typically around $ 0.3 cents per unit of power. Still, because the construction of the hydropower plants tends to be mired in corruption, it is a small wonder that the selling price per unit tends to more than double! Ethiopian power at $0.07 US is still very cheap compared to Tanzania’s current power-selling unit price. Although Ethiopian power is lower than ours, consumers will continue to pay higher unit costs than they have been accustomed to from Tanesco. It is doubtful that Northern region power consumers will see a downturn in unit power purchases.
Consumers may not complain, but the aim of the regional power pool, which is to reduce the cost burden to the final user, will be defeated. Tanzania has been buying power from Uganda to feed the Kagera region. Also, Rukwa has been tapping on Zambian power while Tanga has been doing the same through Kenya. Rusumo power, instead of being taken to Kyela, is used in Kigoma and Kagera; the remaining is sold to Rwanda and Burundi. Kyela gets electricity from our peaceful neighbours from Malawi. The regional power pool has already been in the offing, but the problem has been the scale and lack of compendium.
The Ethiopian power exercise has been laced with politics instead of technical know-how. As a result, it has been misconceived and distorted. I read with a sense of discontent when some bloggers claimed the arrangement was temporary because five turbines at Nyerere hydropower plant had failed, which was not the case. The East African power pool has been in the pipeline for much longer, even before the Nyerere dam was constructed. The amount of power generated in Tanzania has nothing to do with the execution of plans to develop and sustain the regional power pool that aims to boost our own and regional members’ sufficiency in power capacity and availability.
Read more analysis by Rutashubanyuma Nestory
