Interconnections good for Africa

marketing of elec­tricity on behalf of member state utilities in the South­ern African Development Community.
The power utilities in mainland Sadc, with the exception of Angola, Malawi and the United Republic of Tanzania, are interconnected through SAPP, allow­ing them to trade in electricity through a competitive mar­ket. Established in 1995 through an Intergovernmental Memorandum of Understanding, SAPP has, among other things, managed to create a market for elec­tricity in the region, allowing customers to benefit from the advantages associated with energy co-opera­tion. The regional power pool has also co-ordinated efforts to exploit the numerous energy resources that are in abun­dance in the region.
For example, SAPP has identified a number of prior­ity energy projects for commissioning over the next few years to address energy shortages in the region.
Most of these projects target renewable energy sources such as solar, hydro and wind — which are less polluting to the environment compared to other forms such as coal thermal.
Addressing the recent 33rd SAPP executive commit­tee meeting held in Harare, Zimbabwe, Sadc senior pro­gramme officer for energy Freddie Motlhatlhedi said for SAPP to fully carry out its duties, member states need to review the role and functions of the regional power pool. Presently, SAPP has limited power to implement energy projects, and Motlhatlhedi says there is need for the power pool to have more authority in spearheading efforts to ensure that the region recovers from crip­pling power shortages that became more widespread in 2006/07.
“It is time we revised the Intergovernmental Memo­randum of Understanding (IGMOU) and other agree­ments that created SAPP so that the organisation is empowered and given more powers to enforce deci­sions made by member states,” Motlhatlhedi said.
The IGMOU of 1995 was last reviewed in 2006 by the SADC energy ministers when they signed the Revised Inter-Governmental Memorandum of Under­standing. The IGMOU is one of four agreements that govern SAPP operations. Others are the Inter-Utility Memo­randum of Understanding that established SAPP’s basic manage­ment and operating principles; the Agreement Between Operating Members which estab­lished the special rules of operation and pricing; and the Operating Guidelines, which provide standards and operating guidelines.
In this regard, SAPP operations are mainly based on a set of agreements among the member utilities as opposed to formal laws, which would, among other things, allow the regional body to have greater author­ity on issues of energy in the region.
Motlhatlhedi said consultations on the review of the IGMOU should commence ahead of the Sadc energy ministers’ meeting scheduled for April 2013 in Lesotho.
He urged member states to set up a committee that will look at how best to restructure and review SAPP so that the recommendations could be approved by the Sadc energy ministers next year.
Addressing the same meeting, Zimbabwe Energy and Power Development Minister Elton Mangoma urged SAPP to ensure that all member states are inter­connected on the regional grid.
“SAPP needs to connect its three non-connected members, namely Angola, Malawi and Tanzania, to the interconnected regional grid. The continued lack of interconnection of these member states is depriving the region and the citizens in these countries of the benefits of interconnection that the rest of the members currently enjoy,” he said.
More transmission lines through the SAPP would also enable member states to benefit from new genera­tion capacity installed in other countries.
With Angola, Malawi and Tanzania not intercon­nected through SAPP, it means that any new genera­tion capacity installed in any of the three countries is not realised outside the nine other SAPP members.
The 33rd SAPP executive com­mittee which was held on October 18 coincided with the inauguration of the new SAPP Co-ordination Centre offices in Harare.
The centre acts as a focal point for SAPP activities, par­ticularly through the technical oversight of pool opera­tions and facilitating electricity trading.
With electricity problems dogging the region there is no doubt that while the solution in the current power shortage lies in long-term investment in power genera­tion, the immediate solution lies in pooling together power resources and dis­tributing them according to needs.
At the moment no country in the region is safe from the power problems and is about time the leadership pools power resources for a rational distribu­tion.
There is no other immediate solution except pooling the power supply and working on individual coun­tries’ demands, working on deficits and surplus.
Nowhere in the world is power more critically in short supply than in the Sadc region and the game of numbers should make member states learn to share power. Unlike other resources, power is difficult to preserve for tomor­row. If you do not use it today, you will not be having tomorrow. — sardc.net.