The UNCONNECTED DOTS In Ghana Energy

It is glaringly evident that the nation's Energy crisis has been a maddening issue for the last few years. The main reason for the crisis is the country's dwindling energy resources and lack of proportionality of energy. One of this is that oil prices have surged up to such levels that it has become very difficult for the several Power Plants to use oil as fuel for generating power.

Energy crisis has turned out to be the most pressing issue not just for developing nations but also for developed nations. For example, in Ghana, Electricity demand has risen over 10% a year for the past three years, according to figures from the Ministry of Energy, in line with population growth and business development.

Electricity consumption is currently estimated at 7.09bn kilowatts per hour (KWh), while production capacity hovers at around 6.49bn KWh, according to a recent statement by William Hutton-Mensah, the managing director of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG). This means that Ghana is constantly running on a tight demand-and-supply balance, which exposes the network to blackouts. It is predicted that this trend will continue to increase over the next few decades and keeping these statistics under consideration energy crisis principally becomes a national concern.

The demand for energy will continue to increase in a growing economy such as Ghana, for the reason of increase in procurement of energy for industrial expansion & rising population. However, it is evident that our nation lacks the proper infrastructure & power system network to furnish these growing energy needs.

Most of the power generation is through the use of old technologies & topologies which lack the capability to effectively convert the burning fuel's energy into useful power. The efficiencies range within 25-30%. As a result of which a lot of energy is wasted at the point of generation. The distribution side is not good either due to the increased transmission losses & poor conductors being used for transmission. The transmission network is antiquated & needs an upgrade to avoid the losses.

Frequent load shedding “Dumsor Dumsor” in the country has exacerbated the crisis further as it had affected the industrial growth adversely.

One of the pressing issues with developed countries is increased price of oil since most of the oil & gas reservoirs of world are in hands of few unstable nations.

There are numerous resources for sustainable energy in the world. However due to lack of the requisite knowledge in the technology these resources still need to be discovered. Though, one must look at the alternative energy sources which could be employed to generate pure energy without affecting the environment. Solar, Wind, Biofuel, Geothermal etc. are sources for clean & surplus energy. Amongst the alternatives highlighted Solar Energy, seems to be the most realistic one in becoming the cardinal source of generating clean energy for world in coming years.

I must say that relatively today, the cost of Solar panels is somehow much high for utilizing this alternative source of energy for power generations at developing nations like Ghana, however, highly improved technology over the years have given glittering hopes that within the next decade solar would be the primary source of power generation in most of the Sub Saharan African countries.

According to a recent projection by IEA solar power would replace the conventional power generation schemes at majority of countries within the next 50 years despite the many design issues along with power quality & quantity and need to be taken care of before the traditional grids could be transmuted to solar grids.

Another way to tackle our national energy crisis is by using the generated energy efficiently & sparingly. We need to slow down this increasing trend of energy consumption & be more intelligent in conserving. Apart from the user end, power plants need to be upgraded with latest technologies to utilize most of the energy generated from the burning fuel. Spinning Reserve has been a concern for power plants for quite some time & proper solution needs to be researched to avoid wastage of costly fuel.

A lot of companies and institutions are trying unremittingly to make Smart Grid an engineering reality.

Smart Grid, is an intricate system of power conservation & distribution that involves incorporation of sophisticated algorithms to manage the distribution for higher performance not just for consumers but also for power utilities.

Micro grids which serve as a perfect solution for power system could turn out duly handsome when incorporated with the Smart Technology for improving the power quality, reducing the carbon emission & increasing reliability. Micro grids address the issue of increased energy demand through efficient distribution.

Already, world's power giants such as GE, ABB, and Siemens are investing exorbitant sum of money in the research & design of these new power plant topologies.

Another way to take on the energy crisis is though combined cycle power plants. The upside of combined cycle power plants is enhanced efficiency, reduction in fuel cost & improved reliability. Combined cycle power plants today are also possible through Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). This system is used to run steam power plant through pipes.

Besides as an environmentalist, I heartily wish to say that just looking on for energy sources we also need to tackle the issue of Global Warming which has also become a much more agitated one. We are still on the way of finding effective sources of clean & pure energy but until then we must reduce the impact of CO2 emissions on the environment.

This could be made possible through the use carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology which involves capturing the residual CO2 & depositing it at specific storage sites rather than releasing it in the atmosphere.

From the above text, it is quite apparent that there exists as a solution oriented model which may work out for mitigating if not uprooting the energy crisis. Many of the issue could be addressed with the technology at hand to cater the imbalance between the demand & supply of energy.

In parallel to this, research needs to be completed on renewable energy resources so that they could turn out to be the replacement of world's increasing energy demand in the long run.

Maxmillian Kwarteng
Energy and Environmental Manager
[email protected]