National Power Sector Master Plan 2017 – 2040, Cabo Verde

CONTEXT

The EU – Cape Verde Special Partnership was approved by the Council at the end of 2007 and is now in its implementation phase on the six priority sectors: governance, security, information society, regional integration, normative and technical convergence towards EU standards and fight against poverty.

The Special Partnership is a framework of mutual interests with a major political dimension, rather than a traditional donor-recipient relationship scheme.

• EU cooperation in the Country for the 10th EDF represented 51MEUR, which was mainly directed to poverty reduction, in particular water and sanitation and health.
• For the 11th EDF, a Good Governance and Development Contract (GGDC) will be established, with two windows: (i) Support to poverty reduction and; (ii) Strengthen the Special Partnership between the EU and CV.

In 2012 Cape Verde had an installed electricity generation capacity of around 300 MW, of which about 24% from wind power plants and 3% from photovoltaic stations. While solar power has an enormous potential as a source of renewable energy, natural conditions in Cape Verde are one of the best in the world for the production on wind energy. Solid waste can also represent an adequate option while ocean and geothermic energy are being tested, with uncertainties remaining as to their efficiency. Cape Verde has an estimated potential of 2,600 MW of renew-able energy, and more than 650 MW have been studied in concrete projects, which have lower production costs than fossil fuels.

Due to the rapid growth of the service sector (especially tourism) and the expected population increase, the annual electric power demand is expected to increase from the current 204GWh to 448GWh in 2016, and the 2015 objective of reaching 100% access to electricity in the country is very close to be attained with current access at over 95%.

Cape Verde has but one electricity company (Electra) and Cape Verde has one of the highest electricity prices in the world. Furthermore, the electric system is inefficient and registers energy losses of around 30%. In 2009, the main grid consisted of medium voltage transmission which was standardized at 20 kV, but in 2012, the first high voltage transmission line was created in the island of Santiago at 60 kV (43 km of overhead line), representing the largest electrical system in the country. Another challenge is the fact that the country’s dry climate is prone to drought and 90% of its drinking water is obtained through a desalinization process which consumes around 10% of the country’s total energy production.

The Government’s objectives for the power sector were presented in a number of documents, which were elaborated in the context of the West-African SE4All initiate under the guidance of Directorate General for Energy of the Government of Cape Verde. These documents and the stated policy objectives will provide and orientation for the elaboration of the RE Electricity Master Plan and their importance will be reviewed with the Cabo Verde Government.

Currently RE penetration reaches 25% in average. To achieve a least-cost electricity supply with high shares of RE according to the current plans and the National Plan for Renewable Energy of 2012, a deep transformation on the power sector is needed. New technologies should be introduced, including storage technologies. However, the electricity grids, as well as grid management strategies have to be transformed to modern and automatized systems, integrating information and telecommunication (IT) technologies.

The National RE Electricity Master Plan will take into account the international climate change mitigation agreements, the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (iNDCs) and the ongoing process of  Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) formulation.

OBJECTIVES

The overall objective is to assist in achieving SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) goal No 7:  access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services, and assist in the in the fight against energy poverty and accompany accompanying Cape Verde to a path to sustainable growth.

This assignment follows the policy objectives laid down in the Joint Declaration on sustainable energy cooperation signed by the Cape Verde Government, the EU and some of its member states, signed on 23 September 2014 in New York, with the main objective of increasing the provision of modern, secure, competitive and sustainable energy service to the Cape Verdean population and enterprises.

The specific objective is to provide to the Cape Verde Government technical assistance for the elaboration of the National Electricity Master Plan 2017-2040.

The Master Plan will serve as a structural document for the energy sector.

With this National Electricity Master Plan the national authorities will have access to the required international know-how and experience to develop power sector development scenarios in line with the overall national electricity policy objectives.

The Master Plan will consider the major settings of the power sector development: Spatial demand forecast, new and reinforcement of transmission and distribution grid infrastructures, power supply structure (location, size, sources and technologies), and grid management, institutional and organizational structure.

In addition, the ongoing knowledge, know-how and technology-transfer activities in all relevant aspects of the electricity sector shall be analyzed with the objective to determine additional actions to improve the conditions of the electricity sector planning, management and operation.

The expected outcomes include:

• Energy and socio-economic Data collection, review and analysis,
• Load demand forecast,
• Power generation supply necessary to meet demand,
• Transmission expansion planning,
• Power system analysis and optimization and least-cost optimization,
• Economic and financial analyses,
• Indicative generation and transmission costing, impacts upon electricity tariffs,
• Environmental and social impact assessments, including consideration of gender issues.

The strategy assessment will be complemented by environmental, economic and financial impact studies, tariff studies and an Action Agenda and Investment Plan together with Policy Recommendations.

DESCRIPTION

To prepare the Power Sector Master Plan covering the 9 islands of Cape Verde in accordance with the retained objectives and planning principles. The work programme is structured in six phases. At the end of each phase Gesto prepared a progress statement in form of reports and power point presentations. In this way the EU Delegation, the CV Government and the designated stakeholders can be informed and can provide comments and suggestions.

For the elaboration of the Power Sector Master Plan a total experts of 8 months is considered (from May to December 2017).

The following phases were conducted:

Phase I – Inception Phase: In this phase, the Gesto reviewed the existing documentation and the data availability. They will establish the working contacts and will learn about the manpower resources made available by the CV counterpart institutions. Gesto will present and discuss their planning criteria, methodology, work plan and the planning software to be used. The Inception Report will then present the assessment of the present situation (including sub-optimal operational status-quo on the supply side and inefficiencies at both supply and demand side) and the adjusted methodology and work plan. Of central importance is the proposal for the least-cost demand-supply simulations, storage technologies and grid management systems necessary to support higher RE contribution.

Phase II – Electricity Demand Scenarios and Electricity Supply Options: This was dedicated to the fieldwork in CV for the electricity demand analysis.

Different electricity demand scenarios were elaborated, considering determining factors such as economic development, expected elasticity to electricity prices, demand side management (DSM) and direct RE energy use at the consumer side (behind the meter). Of importance is to prepare daily and seasonal demand curves.

The proposed scenarios should be based on the analysis of existent historical data; on the foreseen Investments and Developments Plans; on Economic Projections; on Demographic Projections. The analysis should be based on a disaggregation of typical consumer classes either by socioeconomic characteristics or economic activities. Of importance is determination of consumer groups, which can accommodate supply intermittencies. Important is to also consider a Spatial Analysis using GIS tools (spatial distribution of consumers, residential or companies using). A catalogue of RE, thermal generation and electricity storage options will be determined and respective the key-parameters for the demand supply simulations will be determined.

Phase III – Least-cost Demand-supply Scenario and Impact Assessment: A number of least-cost electricity demand-supply scenarios will be determined. Gesto developed technically feasible scenarios, which were then assessed under an environmental, economic and financial perspective taking into account internal climate change mitigation policies.

The quantitative and qualitative result from the scenario served as basis for future investment decision, tendering for IPP and for the formulation of policy recommendations.

Phase IV – Grid Development Plan: In this phase, the Grid Development (including strengthening and extension) and customer connection plans were prepared for the nine islands. This also included specification of required metering and intelligent grid equipment.

It also included a dynamic analysis of grid stability in the scenario of high RE penetration.

Phase V – Institutional, Environmental, Social, Economic and Financial Strategy Assessment: While the scenario impact assessments in Phase II were limited in scope and depth because a certain number of assessment criteria were used, in this phase more assessments were elaborated. The environmental impacts and benefits will be determined. The social assessment criteria will consider employment, energy cost burden and gender issues. The economic assessment will determine economic impact and the economic cost burden of RE shares in generation. The financial assessment will determine the required financial resources and the sources to finance the strategy. This will include also consumer / feed-in tariff / net metering tariff analyses.

In addition, the institutional arrangement of the sector were analyzed in order to propose a power sector arrangement and management more adapted to the objective and characteristic of renewable energy technologies. This will include recommendation on the best strategy for the structure and management of the national utility ELECTRA.

Phase VII – Action Plan, Investment Plan and Policy Recommendation: The resulting electricity policy implications will be presented in form of an Action Plan and of Policy Recommendations formulated as an Electricity Sector Strategy Document with due reference to the Cape Verde – EU joint declaration and the intended Nationally Determined Contribution (iNDC) of Cape Verde.

SUMMARY OF SERVICES

• Energy demand-supply analysis for the reference period,
• Assessment of the regulatory, legal and institutional framework conditions,
• Assessment of electricity requirements and DSM potential,
• Identification of electricity generation options,
• Identification of electricity storage options,
• Least-cost electricity supply system analysis with RE and back-up technologies,
• Demand-supply scenario impact assessment and strategy selection,
• Grid Infrastructure Development,
• Environmental and social impact assessment,
• Economic and financial assessment,
• Institutional assessment,
• Electricity sales and feed-in tariff study,
• Policy recommendation and action catalogue,
• Capacity building.