Power planning for a smart integrated African super-grid

Abstract

Africa's population has increased sharply from 364 million in 1970 to 1.3 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach 2.0 billion by 2050, representing the world's largest labor pool. Rapid growth in African population, generation capacity constraints, belated investment in new electricity infrastructure, load growth in unplanned areas, poor maintenance of existing power assets are some of Africa's critical challenges. These have resulted in demand outstripping available power generation capacity, leading to electricity shortages, load shedding, a huge backlog of unserved customers, and low economic growth. This paper presents the concept of a Smart Integrated African Super Grid, designed to energize Africa's emerging economy. In this paper, the five African Power pools are discussed, and the schemes for harnessing Africa's untapped renewable energy resources. A methodology is proposed to use highly complex power system controllers to integrate the African power pools, into a super-grid that absorbs large penetration of renewable powers using dispersed interconnected low voltage micro-grids, without compromising on power quality, stability, technical loss reduction, sustainability, and system reliability.