Power Supply Challenges in Southern Africa

The development of a regional interconnected power system has contributed to both a best outcome for the economic sharing of scare energy sources and for preparing the market to operate in environments with limited reserve margins. The region has an abundance of thermal coal, widespread solar availability and large rivers for hydroelectric power generation. Wind and ocean energy could be harnessed in limited quantities. The region currently enjoys the worlds lowest cost electrical energy as sourced from low cost thermal coal operated power plants located in South Africa. With increasing customer demands and climate change linked to thermal coal generation, the region has a two fold challenge, provide for more power but without thermal coal and to go back and start to replace thermal coal with more environmentally acceptable alternatives. In this search for an equivalent lower cost primary energy source, the value of the hydroelectric capacity of the major rivers of Southern Africa grows with time. Large scale hydro electric power plants all interconnected by robust transmission emerges as the practical and workable solution to the growing power deficit of an aggressive economy surging forward.