By Destenie Nock May 21, 2020
In August the SEN-Africa Research Team traveled to Ghana to host an electricity workshop in Accra and Tamale, aimed at uncovering the objectives stakeholders have when planning the power system. Our meetings with electricity stakeholders and users revealed competing priorities (reliability, cost, safety, security, reducing theft), highlighting the need to integrate social benefits into planning models. The original Worldwide Universities Network News write up about my project for universal access in Sub-Saharan Africa can be found here and is copied below:
SUMMARY
Universal access to “affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy” is the target set by UN Sustainable Development Goal 7. Typically, planning models have emphasized the first of those concerns: affordability. “The classic way of modelling electrification is to minimise costs,” explained Professor Erin Baker (University of Massachusetts Amherst). But consultations with electricity users have revealed a range of competing priorities, highlighting the need to integrate social benefits and trade-offs into planning models. Read more from Professor Baker and Dr Samuel Atarah (University of Ghana) of the SEN-Africa research group on their findings from stakeholder consultations in northern and southern Ghana.
STORY
In Ghana in 2017, 65% of the rural population had access to electricity, compared with 90% of the urban population, according to World Bank figures. But demand continues to outstrip supply and outages persist. Scholars in the Sustainable Electricity Access Network for Africa (SEN-Africa), supported by WUN seed funding, are developing new models to reflect the social trade-offs in decision-making on electrification.
Interviews and a workshop in Accra, at the University of Ghana, did indeed show cost to be a significant concern for consumers. But when researchers took the consultations to Tamale, in the north, reliability emerged as a more important issue despite this region representing poorer communities. Their concern for reliability over cost reflected the system of cross-subsidisation: with electricity expensive in the north, low-income households tended to limit their electricity usage to what they could access at the subsidised rate. As Dr Samuel Atarah (University of Ghana) explained, this illustrates “an important trade-off between cost, reliability, and access in the Sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, subsidies make electricity more affordable to low-income residents, but lead to less money for reliability and expansion of the electricity system infrastructure.”
Electricity theft is common, with improvised connections creating threats. This is an area where more research is needed, Atarah indicated, “to understand the relationship between tariff structures, the physical infrastructure, and incentive and opportunity for theft, and how likely different combinations are to lead to life-threatening outcomes.”
Consultations also highlighted challenges for green energy. Interviewees were very positive when asked about renewables, Professor Baker said, but almost never raised them spontaneously. The lead-acid batteries that make it possible to use solar energy for lighting represent a significant up-front cost and only last two years or so. Atarah expanded: “There is a true concern on affording and sustaining such systems with inverters and batteries. I think that renewable energy has a great potential to be a bigger part of nations energy source in Sub-Saharan regions and more could be invested in the area.” He cited systems by which solar power is fed directly to the national grid—such as the Navrongo Solar Plant which the researchers also visited—as “one way to avoid batteries yet increase the proportion of green energy to national consumption.”
These findings have major implications for modelling practices, Baker indicated: “instead of minimising costs there are other objectives, such as utility, reliability, safety. We want to build models that incorporate these other metrics and acknowledge that different groups may have different priorities.” A methodology for maximising social benefits and distributional equality has already been published (Nock, Levin and Baker 2020) and the group is preparing a White Paper to map findings and share with policy-makers and industry.
“WUN has been fantastic in building this network,” Baker commented. SEN-Africa researchers plan to extend their research to other countries. “Doing this initial stakeholder work helps us understand what the questions are and seed funding has produced a whole series of different ideas for larger proposals, including expanded collaborations, various models, and empirical data to collect,” she said. As more comparative cases are added and models developed, their research will be able to inform decision-makers on the social trade-offs of different approaches to expanding electrification.
Note about the SEN-Africa Team: The Sustainable Energy-Access Network for Africa is made up of researchers from the University of Ghana, University of Nairobi, University of Cape Town, University of Massachusetts, Argonne National Lab, and Carnegie Mellon University. The aim of the team is to create more holistic research that is stakeholder driven and investigates how to improve electricity systems and access throughout the continent. More can be found on their website at sen-africa.org. The WUN information about their project can be found here.
Note about the Author: Dr. Destenie Nock is a post doc and incoming professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the Engineering & Public Policy and Civil & Environmental Departments. Her work specializes in electricity modeling, and sustainability in the USA and Africa. Specifically she hopes that through her work there can be a greater exchange of knowledge and understanding of ways to improve the electricity sector. Specifically she hopes that her work can paint a more holistic and inclusive view of how to improve the sustainability of electricity systems.
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