Electricity trade impacts on regional power pools in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this study, we evaluated the impacts of 3 different electricity trade scenarios among four African power pools given a time series of available hydropower production. The available hydropower production is determined after all other higher priority water demands are met using a river basin model (WEAP). The objective of the power pool model (RTEP) was to maximize global welfare (i.e., meet total electricity demand at lowest cost including the cost of non-served energy) assuming perfect competition. From the WEAP analysis, the CAPP produces the most hydropower followed by the EAPP and SAPP and lastly the WAPP. This is also seen in the RTEP analysis which shows the connection of the two models. In the No Trade and Min Trade scenarios, there is a significant amount of hydropower production that goes unused in all regions, especially in the CAPP and SAPP. A positive outcome of the Full Trade scenario is that all hydropower is used, none is wasted. By allowing trade among the power pools, the need to build new electricity production facilities is decreased by about 19 GW in the Min Trade scenario and an additional 10 GW in the Full Trade scenario. By reducing the need to expand production capacity, these regions save money by not needing to build new facilities but instead are able to use electricity from other power pools.