Namibia has the potential to generate its own electricity in a decentralised way, if the country’s electricity sector can be transformed in a broad-based development tool that can generate power into the 21st century and beyond for the country.
This is according to Harald Schutt an energy expert who says Namibia’s abundant solar, wind and biomass resources constitute a national comparative and sustainable advantage. Shutt is currently conducting a two day workshop in Swakopmund on renewable energy in Namibia, themed a decentralised approach.
The workshop is attended by various councillors and mayors of Swakopmund, Walvis Bay, Henties Bay, Omaruru and Karibib as well as electricity stakeholder, such as Erongo RED.
Shutte says despite African countries continuously working to supply energy to its people, the approach or solutions to do it is wrong and costly to their governments.
“Despite their efforts, we have seen through the years how very often European solutions have been applied for African problems, such as energy supply. We have been using technologies that has been imported and develop under completely different conditions for Europe and are applying it to our African needs,” he said.
He went on and explained that population also plays a major role in energy supply. “If we look at Germany, in terms of population density. For every 10 kilometres one would find at least 2300 that can bear the cost of a energy supply to that specific suburb.
Where in Namibia one would often find no one living in that radius whereby the closest village to the power station could be about 40 kilometres away with only 250 inhabitants and this makes power supply an expensive process for government and the end user,” he explained.
Sharing his views further on the country’s electricity supply and network, Schutt said that Nampower has inherited an electricity network that was meant to supply only a small fraction of Namibians, as only an elite group had access to electricity before independence.
However, I must say that Nampower is doing a great job in terms of electricity supply despite the fact that they inherited a network that was meant to only supply whites with electricity before independence, Shutt explained. He then said that Africans should use African resources to supply our African people.
“We all need energy. We cannot afford to have a simple supply network to supply energy to villages as it is unaffordable due to cost involve. In many African country’s people go where energy is.
Namibia, however, is in the position to generate energy decentralised. We can produce energy where it’s needed in our homes, villages or towns and then feed it into our main grid. That will have a big impact on our cost.
Individual investments into generation capacity in villages and households can also be made to supply energy and cut costs involved as well,” he said.
He then explained that this can be done through tariff systems such as the net metering that is currently being considered by the Electricity Control Board. “Net metering simply means energy or electricity is generated during day time and then used in the evenings.