BY TEWODROS KASSA
Wind energy is one of the most cost-effective forms of renewable energy sources with significant increment in yearly installed capacities all around the world. In Africa wind power deployment has been very limited when compared to hydropower, with about 5.5 GW installed capacity by 2018. Ethiopia, being located near the equator, its wind resource potential is very much limited.
According to the Ethiopian electric power report, the total exploitable wind energy potential of the country is around 1,350 GW. Despite such huge potential, Ethiopia is currently generating a total of 324 megawatts of electricity from three different wind farms. These are Adama I Wind Farm which is generating 51 megawatts; Adama II and Ashegoda wind farms which are generating 153 megawatts each. As a result, Ethiopia is one of the countries in Africa in which energy resources are underexploited, as evident from the past, significant energy demands are still met from traditional resources.
Commendably, Ethiopia is endowed with abundant renewable energy resources, which can meet the ambitions of nationwide electrification. However, in spite of all its available potentials the country’s energy sector is still in its infancy stage. Majority of the Ethiopia population lives in the rural area without access to modern energy and relied solely on traditional biomass energy sources. Nowadays, Ethiopia has one of the lowest electricity consumption per capita in Africa.
Although Ethiopia does not have significant fossil fuel resource, it is endowed with a huge amount of renewable energy resources such as hydro, wind, geothermal, and solar power. However, only a small portion of these resources has been utilized so far and less than 30 percent of the nation’s population has access to electricity. Out of the estimated wind energy potential of the country, only less than 5 percent of this potential is developed so far.
Despite a tremendous potential of this energy system, the development of wind farm is in its early stages in Ethiopia due to technical and economic reasons. In the context of the Ethiopian power system, wind power will play a vital complementary role with hydroelectric power due to the natural cycle of high wind energy availability in the dry season during hydropower reservoirs are low in water, and it decreases in the wet seasons when the reservoirs are rapidly filling up with water.
This will make wind power a crucial ingredient of the grid energy mix by improving the reliability of the system even in dry seasons. Although, in behind mega projects planned to achieve energy mix; the government of Ethiopia should also plan off-grid and micro-grid wind farms to cover isolated rural areas as well as for the village level rural electrification; micro-grid wind and solar hybrid system with the subsidize tariff is also better if introduced.
Enzirt Engineering CEO and Co-Founder as well as Addis Ababa University Institute of Technology fifth year Chemical Engineering student Sophonias Dawit told The Ethiopian Herald that developing and utilizing wind power plays an indispensable role to provide decentralized energy sources. Beyond this, introducing latest technology assisted renewable energy sources contributes more to address the huge power gap in the rural part of Ethiopia. Such renewable energy sources also play a meaningful role in mitigating carbon emissions and promoting Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE). Enzirt team installs small size and easily portable wind turbine that helps rural households to access energy with affordable price.
Enzirt team’s wind turbine project has now proved successful to generate energy after tested in laboratory. Currently, the team is working on finding financial funds to realize the project.The on-going affordable wind farm project execution by the Enzirt team is designed to be practicable with affordable financial cost and targets to address numerous households in the rural Ethiopia in the short run.
According to him, most wind power generating farms are capital intensive. Therefore, apart from its high cost, the sophisticated wind farm might be time consuming to implement. Supporting small scale projects will be productive to enhance sustainable and renewable energy accessibility in the country, he added.
“The wind turbine project utilizes easily accessible raw materials available in the country and consumes only local products. The experience of other developed countries shows that utilizing local products helps galvanizing the manufacturing sector competitiveness in the global market,” he remarked.
The team members said that the government and stakeholders coordination is important to realize the project.
Currently, the Federal Jobs Creation Commission is working towards creating enabling environment to the training and education sector to produce qualified graduates with skills and ethics that fits into the labour market. Thus, enabling the environment for such innovators and youth entrepreneurs especially in the energy sector is fundamental to promote the country’s endeavors to attain the visions of transitions into industrialization.
Experts in the energy sector recommended prioritizing off-grid energy access to address the majority of the Ethiopian people living in rural areas who have limited access to electricity. Mostly, the rural communities run their daily life without electricity access, as the national grids location was quite far from rural communities’ residents considering dispersed distribution of population on the country’s vast land area.
Currently, the rural community largely relies on traditional biomass energy sources by burning wood, dung, and agricultural residues for cooking and heating even a significant proportion for lighting. The energy consumption demand is increasing while observed with energy source elaboration and power generation rate for supply.
Therefore, as to the experts, such wind power generating innovation projects and other new technologies utilization is important to cultivate easily affordable and accessible energy sources in the rural part of the country.
The Ethiopian Herald July 7/2021
