With a few policy changes, can load shedding in Uganda be a thing of the past?

In the past, Uganda as a country suffered greatly from a big challenge known as load shedding. This is a situation in which electricity demand exceeds supply resulting in rationing of power to meet the country’s energy goals. Load shedding negatively impacts the economy not to mention the livelihood of citizens as well as the survival of businesses.

Presently, the situation is much better than before and this can be attributed to a number of things including the energy sector reforms in 2001 that led to the disintegration of the Uganda Electricity Board into generation, transmission, distribution and regulation as stand-alone entities. This move appears to have been the biggest catalyst towards the near elimination of load shedding in the country. Uganda currently has an installed generation capacity of about 800MW with the peak demand not hitting 600MW. This simply means that we generate more power than we can use hence the near extinction of load shedding.

It would be very impetuous to believe the situation will remain this way forever. Even a big economy like South Africa is now suffering greatly from load shedding due to significant load growth. According to the National Development Plan (NDP), Uganda’s peak power demand is rising at about 22.7% per annum. At this rate, Uganda shall not be able to meet its peak demand in not more than 2 years. The question then becomes, “How do we arrest the possibility of falling back into the evil that is load shedding?”

The most sustainable solutions in the long term would be increasing energy production for example the Karuma HPP under development, and building more efficient transmission and distribution systems. High efficiency transformers, superconducting transformers and high temperature superconductors are new technologies which promise much in terms of electrical energy efficiency as new techniques are being studied. It is worth noting that these are all very capital intensive projects that take a number of years to be completed. As a simpler and yet possibly effective alternative in the short term, the government can put in place policies to reduce the country’s peak demand. One policy is putting in place a high unit cost of electricity in the peak hours and a significantly lower cost for the off peak hours. Whereas this is already done for industrial installations, it can be extended to the residential households too since during the peak hours their aggregate demand contributes significantly to the peak demand. In so doing, peak demand is reduced and load shedding postponed at least till the new energy producers are functional.

Is it time for Uganda to look at alternative Renewable energy sources?

Blessed with the largest fresh water lake in Africa (Lake Victoria), Uganda has for many years relied on hydro-electric power to meet her energy needs. With a current total energy supply of 849.5 MW, the presently installed capacity of 695.13 MW from hydro-energy sources alone accounts for close to 82% of Uganda’s energy supply.

However for a long time now, Lake Victoria the main reservoir for the country’s hydro dominated electric power system has suffered a challenge of decreasing water levels caused by climate change and global warming. As a result, majority of the power plants are unable to generate power at their installed capacities.

Considering the present shortages in power supply, it is crucial for the government to develop a strategy to diversify the energy sources by developing the alternative available energy sources within the country. The current energy supply alone cannot meet the rising demand. It is also noteworthy that due to the old age and inadequacy of the existing network, power cuts are frequent as maintenance works proceed and in some cases grid reinforcement is done to meet the growing energy demands of the load centers.

A viable solution to this – Renewable Energy. Wind, solar, and biomass are three emerging renewable sources of energy in the world today. Renewable energy is generally defined as energy that comes from resources which are naturally replenished on a human timescale such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat. As noted in The Renewable Energy Policy for Uganda, Uganda has considerable renewable energy resources for energy production and the provision of energy services, yet they remain unexploited, largely due to the perceived technical and financial risks. These resources include: biomass, geothermal, large scale hydro, mini/micro/pico hydro, wind and solar energy. However, with the exception of biomass, whose contribution is very significant, the remaining renewable sources (including large hydro energy sources), contribute about 5% of the country’s total energy consumption. This limits the scope and productivity of economic activities that can be undertaken in any part of the country. Thus it is imperative that the use of these abundant resources should be enhanced.

Studies completed in 2004 gave the potential of the different sources as indicated in the table below.

Source: Alternative Energy Sources Assessment Report, 2004, National Biomass Assessment Study 2003

With emphasis being put on Distributed Generation (power generation at the point of consumption), sources like solar energy, bio-energy which can be built to match requirements of specific consumers and industries offer a very viable and cost effective solution to cover the energy supply gaps while eliminating common issues concerned with power distribution and transmission like the cost, complexity, inter-dependencies, and inefficiencies. This will result in improved power reliability in the country, a key ingredient for accelerated economic activities and development.