Over the last couple of blog posts, I have been reviewing the current status of deployment, cost competitiveness and long term potential of various power generation technologies in Africa. In last week’s post I reviewed the costs of diesel generation – the primary means for power generation in rural Africa.
In this week’s post we review the costs of power across the continent. I am currently trying to pull together data on actual retail tariffs by country from disparate sources, but this is much harder than anticipated due to paucity of data, so it will be awhile until I share this.
The aim of last week and this week's post is to try and assess whether what is currently used to generate power (be it diesel or others) is cheaper than the cost of building out renewables or whether renewable sources are in fact cost competitive already.
Shown below are estimated costs of generation by country from a study dating back to 2008. See
(a) Vennemo, Haakon, and Ornica Rosnes. 2008. “Powering-Up: Costing Power Infrastructure Investment Needs in Africa.” Background Paper 5, Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic, World Bank, Washington, DC;
(b) Cecilia Briceño-Garmendia and Maria Shkaratan. 2008. “Power Tariffs Caught between Cost Recovery and Affordability.” Policy Research Working Paper 5904, World Bank, Washington, DC.
I have updated these using IHS CERA’s Power Capital Costs Index (PCCI) – without nuclear, as of Q1 2014 and with minor tweaks on my read of the assumptions. The PCCI tracks and forecasts the costs associated with the construction of a portfolio of 30 different power generation plants (coal, gas, wind) indexed to year 2000. These updates are intended to generate a very rough proxy (assuming not much else has changed) of current costs of generation by country.
Cecilia Briceño-Garmendia and Maria Shkaratan. 2008. “Power Tariffs Caught between Cost Recovery and Affordability.” Policy Research Working Paper 5904, World Bank, Washington, DC.
IHS CERA Power Capital Costs Index (PCCI), See http://www.ihs.com/info/cera/ihsindexes/index.aspx
I have superimposed a red line – cost of wind; and a black line (cost of PV), and presented the same information in map format as well. Where costs are higher than those of wind and solar, these highlight cost competitiveness and vice versa.
In over half of the countries presented, (assuming the costs of generation shown are reasonably accurate) means that developing solar / wind at today’s costs should be a no brainer.
In future posts, I will tackle why despite the economics, outside of South Africa, were are still seeing limited growth in power generation in general and renewables specifically. We will also review potential models for delivering solar (I am particularly intrigued by M-KOPA Solar model and similar small scale distributed generation models).
In this week’s post we review the costs of power across the continent. I am currently trying to pull together data on actual retail tariffs by country from disparate sources, but this is much harder than anticipated due to paucity of data, so it will be awhile until I share this.
The aim of last week and this week's post is to try and assess whether what is currently used to generate power (be it diesel or others) is cheaper than the cost of building out renewables or whether renewable sources are in fact cost competitive already.
Shown below are estimated costs of generation by country from a study dating back to 2008. See
(a) Vennemo, Haakon, and Ornica Rosnes. 2008. “Powering-Up: Costing Power Infrastructure Investment Needs in Africa.” Background Paper 5, Africa Infrastructure Country Diagnostic, World Bank, Washington, DC;
(b) Cecilia Briceño-Garmendia and Maria Shkaratan. 2008. “Power Tariffs Caught between Cost Recovery and Affordability.” Policy Research Working Paper 5904, World Bank, Washington, DC.
I have updated these using IHS CERA’s Power Capital Costs Index (PCCI) – without nuclear, as of Q1 2014 and with minor tweaks on my read of the assumptions. The PCCI tracks and forecasts the costs associated with the construction of a portfolio of 30 different power generation plants (coal, gas, wind) indexed to year 2000. These updates are intended to generate a very rough proxy (assuming not much else has changed) of current costs of generation by country.
Estimated costs of generation in Africa, $/MWh
IHS CERA Power Capital Costs Index (PCCI), See http://www.ihs.com/info/cera/ihsindexes/index.aspx
I have superimposed a red line – cost of wind; and a black line (cost of PV), and presented the same information in map format as well. Where costs are higher than those of wind and solar, these highlight cost competitiveness and vice versa.
Estimated costs of generation in Africa, $/MWh - and competitiveness of solar PV/wind
In future posts, I will tackle why despite the economics, outside of South Africa, were are still seeing limited growth in power generation in general and renewables specifically. We will also review potential models for delivering solar (I am particularly intrigued by M-KOPA Solar model and similar small scale distributed generation models).
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