Solar power for Africa: illusory idea?

There is widespread thinking in Africa that the continent’s abundant sunshine could easily be converted into electricity to power homes and businesses there. While this seems like a no-brainer, the reality is that there are technical limitations, cost and other considerations that, for now, make solar power an impractical option.

The capacity factor of a power plant indicates the availability of the plant to produce electricity. Industry estimates put the factor at about 15% for solar plants, compared to around 90% for both coal and nuclear plants.

That is why those two types of plants, as well as hydroelectric and combined-cycle gas plants, which also have relatively high capacity factors, are heavily relied upon for electricity production around the world.

According to a recent report issued by PJM, the grid operator that transmits electricity to about 61 million people in one eastern US region, coal, nuclear and natural gas plants produced a combined 95.1% of the electricity consumed in its territory in 2014.

The percentage for solar power was practically zero. Although serious efforts are being made to increase the amount of renewable energy sources like wind and solar in the PJM fuel mix, it is widely acknowledged that it will take quite some time to achieve that goal.

It is never a good idea to make direct comparisons between the US and a country like Ghana, since socio-economically, the two are very different. However, just to put things in perspective, in 2014, PJM had over 183,000 megawatts of installed generating capacity, with much of it always available, for the 61 million people in its territory.

 In contrast, Ghana, for its 25 million people, had about 3,000 megawatts, with about half of that capacity often unavailable due to equipment breakdowns and lack of fuel. That shows the magnitude of the task facing Ghana, as it seeks to improve its electricity supply.

Because solar energy is generally available only intermittently, the only way it could become a viable alternative to fossil fuels for electricity generation is to store it in large quantities for later use. Unfortunately, storage technologies are currently not sufficiently developed to make that possible.

There is, rightly, a lot of excitement around the recent introduction of the Tesla Powerwall battery, which will allow homeowners to store electricity. However, that, for now, does not offer a practical solution either, due to its cost.

The model designed to store seven kilowatt-hours of electricity is priced at $3,000.  The typical US household uses an estimated 30 kilowatt-hours of electricity daily, so four or five Powerwall batteries would be needed for a house to be completely off-grid.

A Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) calculation puts the total cost of installing rooftop panels, batteries, and other required equipment, at $98,000 for a typical US household. A modern house in Africa is often as large, and, has many of the same appliances and gadgets, as the average American house. Therefore, the cost to make an African household fully reliant on solar power would be close to the BNEF estimate. Obviously, that is impractical.     

Although the cost of solar panels has dropped significantly in recent years, having them installed on rooftops is still beyond the means of the vast majority of Americans. And, for the relatively well-off who have them, they enjoy the convenience of also being connected to the well-functioning grid.

At night, and on cloudy days, such households buy electricity from the grid at relatively low cost. During the daylight hours, they sell to the grid, any excess electricity that their systems produce. That is why, for the vast majority of US households, the Tesla battery is widely considered to be economically unattractive.

It is only when a country has a robust electricity grid that it can effectively incorporate renewables like solar and wind power into its energy mix. That is because even when grid-level storage eventually becomes available at reasonable cost, often, power would still need to be moved from one part of the country to another, due to the intermittency problem.

Also, very large tracts of land are required to produce industrial-scale electricity from wind and solar farms. Normally, such farms are located far away from urban centers, meaning that transmission system infrastructure is required to deliver the electricity to consumers. Environmentalists are already denouncing the clearing of bird and other wildlife habitat to make way for wind and solar farm construction in some countries, making land use another issue to contend with. 

The enormous amounts of electricity, which Africa needs to power its economy, simply cannot be provided by rooftop solar panels and solar farms. My company owns a number of solar power plants, and I get to see the electricity production numbers daily. Output varies widely throughout the day, so there must constantly be other energy sources available to fill the gaps when necessary. Therefore, for the foreseeable future, conventional fuels will continue to play a major role in global electricity production. Africa must accept that reality.

Germany’s aggressive push to increase renewable energy sources in its power generation fleet will cost over $400 billion, according to published estimates. The US and the UK have also, in recent years, provided generous subsidies to help increase wind and solar power production.

However, those subsidies are gradually being withdrawn because even for such rich countries, they are expensive to maintain. Previous reductions of subsidies led to sharp drops in renewable energy investments, because most projects were not financially viable without that government assistance.

Some people are encouraging Africa to lead the fight against climate change, by adopting renewable fuels for power generation. Interestingly, such people don’t say how that shift would be paid for. Sure, Africa has abundant sunshine, but no country on the continent has the hundreds of billions of dollars that Germany is reportedly spending on renewable energy. And, if rich countries find their own subsidies too expensive, they will most likely be unprepared to fund Africa’s renewable energy initiatives.

Many people say that Africa can bypass traditional technologies in power generation, similar to what occurred with telecommunications, when it leapfrogged landline and adopted wireless technology. Waiting for miracles to happen is oftentimes a fool’s game. The renowned Serbian-born engineer, Nikola Tesla, tried wireless transmission of electric power in the late 1800s, but it did not work; nobody has succeeded since then.

Nothing suggests that some other technological breakthrough, which would allow Africa to avoid the hassle of building transmission systems and substations, is on the horizon. So, African countries must simply get on with it, and do what others elsewhere have done to keep the lights on.

Like most people these days, I am concerned about the long-term impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the environment, and believe that serious efforts should be made to preserve the planet for future generations. However, as they say, where you stand depends on where you sit.

There are millions of desperately poor Africans, whose unemployment is directly linked to power shortages. Those people are hungry, and often have to embark on risky journeys in search of better lives elsewhere. Many, unfortunately, die along the way. Nobody can blame such people, if they are more worried about survival today, and less about the future. After all, current lives matter, too.

Africa cannot set the bar so low for itself, and be content with, for the typical household, having a few rooftop panels that can generate just enough electricity to power a couple of lamps and charge a cell phone. The ambition must be higher. Africa should aim for grid-based electricity production. That is the only way to provide opportunities at home for the continent’s vulnerable citizens.  

The author is the manager of retail power marketing at UGI Energy Services, LLC, a diversified energy services firm in Pennsylvania, USA. He was previously a financial analyst at UGI. Prior to UGI, he worked as a senior electrical engineer at Caterpillar, Inc. in the US. He holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University in Indiana, USA, and an MBA from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, USA.