Harnessing local gas and powering rural communities

The Tanzanian government and the World Bank have devised a means of exploiting the country's natural gas resources to increase the country's much needed electrification. A private international consortium, Songas, has built a 200-km underground pipeline at a cost of US $295 million to carry natural gas from the island of Songo Songo to the industrial area of Ubungo in the country's commercial centre, Dar es Salaam. A gas power plant in Ubungo began operating on 21 June. By the end of the year it will generate 120 megawatts of electricity, roughly one quarter of Tanzania's current peak demand. The electricity will be a huge boost to metropolitan areas, but most Tanzanians live in rural areas. Less then 1 percent have electricity and the added power from the pipeline will not go to them. In constructing the pipeline, around 100,000 people living in 25 villages and four towns along the Songo Songo pipeline had their land dug up and their lives disrupted. Compensating them by extending the grid to their homes using conventional transmission wires from a central power plant would cost approximately $10,000 per kilometre, according to a 2004 report by the UN Development Programme (UNDP). Instead, the government and the World Bank have devised the wayleave village electrification scheme. The scheme includes building a miniature, 4.5-megawatt, power station approximately 200 km south of Dar es Salaam, with an electric grid that would supply electricity to some 80,000 people living in four towns. For the remaining 20,000 people in the 25 villages, providing electricity from the mini-grid would be too expensive. But each household would get solar panels. The World Bank is funding both the mini-grid and the solar panels project, which will cost an estimated $10.6 million that is just 3 percent of the cost of the Songo Songo pipeline. But so far the wayleave project is just in a starting phase. It has been two years in the making and was supposed to have been completed along with the pipeline on 21 June. "Nothing has actually been put in the ground," said Norbert Kahyoza, a senior planning engineer at the Tanzanian Ministry of Energy and Minerals. He could not say when the scheme would be completed but expected it to happen before 31 March 2006, which is when credit from the World Bank will run out. The problem is that the original scheme had to be revised radically. The first plan was for the towns along the pipeline to access the gas by creating a series of power stations. That turned out to be expensive and impractical, Kahyoza said. The current type of mini-grid scheme is now favoured in many developing countries. They are a "lowest-cost means of providing electricity to neighbourhoods or entire communities," according to a World Bank report. But the grids are often improvised. The locals who run them are often inexperienced. The grids are inefficient, unsafe and short-lived. The Tanzanian government has promised that the wayleave mini-grid will be different. The government has started hiring professional contractors to build and manage the project so that the power is reliable and safe. This would be a boost to local industry and commerce in the four towns. But electricity in the 25 villages with solar energy cannot hope to have the same effect. "Solar electricity does not help create industry," said Mark Hankins, managing director of Energy Alternatives Africa and consultant for the UNDP. A standard 12-watt solar panel provides enough energy to power low voltage light sources, televisions and radios. But it cannot supply energy for high-powered equipment like welders, heaters or grinders for grains. The advantage of solar energy is that for isolated households it is cheap, Hankins said. But these rural communities with solar energy will need to develop eventually and upgrade to a mini- or full grid system, Kahyoza said. "Solar energy should be a stepping stone not an island," he said.