The photo is sourced from XINHUA News
HPPs are the main source of electricity in Zambia: according to the Ember think tank, the share of hydro power plants in the country’s energy mix stood at 91% in 2021, with another 5% represented by coal-fired TPPs and the remaining 4% by diesel generators, solar panels and biomass units. Moreover, HPPs demonstrate the highest rates of installed capacity growth: whereas the capacity of Zambia’s coal-fired TPPs in the period from 2015 through 2022 rose by 330 MW, that of HPPs went up by 904 MW, according to Global Energy Monitor and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
However, the country is not yet fully electrified: while 82% of residents in Zambia’s cities and towns had access to electricity in 2020, that number was as low as 14% for rural areas. This disparity is observed in most countries south of Sahara, as Abel Didier Tella, Director General of the Association of Power Utilities of Africa, pointed out earlier. “The issue of universal access to electricity in Africa is two-sided. If we take cities, all is well there: on average, more than 70% of urban population has access to energy. In rural areas, this indicator hovers below 20%, i.e., the average value stands at approximately 45–50%,” he said at the Regional to Global: Africa conference organised by the Global Energy Association in February 2023.
A possible solution for the region is the development of independent power generation. According to IRENA, the aggregate capacity of power plants isolated from the common grid grew from 2 MW in 2015 to 10 MW in 2022 across Zambia and from 651 MW to 1,423 MW across Africa at large. The most popular independent power plants are solar ones, which account for a little over 75% of the total capacity of Zambia’s independent generators. This share is going to rise in the coming years due to the emergence of contactless methods of cleaning solar panels based on the electrostatic repulsion effect and do not require water, a scarce resource for many African countries.
