Being able to use a variety of renewable energies is essential in Ethiopia, which is committed to reducing its carbon emissions by two-thirds within the next 15 years. Although the available power will fluctuate, using solar, wind and hydropower will also provide higher levels of resilience in the face of climate change. Ethiopia has significant renewable resources in wind, solar and hydropower.
Ethiopia is in step with the goals of the Power Africa program aiming to increase electricity generation in the country significantly by adding various centralized hydro, solar, wind and geothermal power plants, as well as large-capacity power transmission lines. However, this development has to be coupled with appropriate retail distribution models that are compatible with the realities of sparseness in geography and undeveloped markets in order to ensure that the capacity additions reach the target populations.
Considering this, Dr. Belachew Bantyirga, senior researcher and lecturer at Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Bahir Dar University, in collaboration with University of Wisconsin-Madison has conducted a PEER supported project entitled “Development of a Microgrid Research Center in Ethiopia to Support USAID’s Power Africa Program”. Instead of trying to connect widely dispersed villages to a national electrical grid, the project aims to develop Microgrids, or stand-alone, small-scale electric networks to generate, store and distribute electricity to individual or groups of villages.
Dr. Belachew is now in Madison for eight weeks this summer to develop a blueprint for a laboratory-scale microgrid that will be built at Bahir Dar University.
The analysis on the significant and current status of the project is posted by the Global Healthy Institute shall be accessed on http://ghi.wisc.edu/ghi-in-action/project-will-bring-light-to-ethiopian-villages/
