In this paper, as an alternative scenario will be proposed for Ethiopia's electricity sector, let us look through the Ethiopia's baseline scenario. Ethiopia's energy supply is covered mostly by waste and biomass (92%). Oil (6.7%) and hydropower (0.9%) are the other two primary energy sources. The installed capacity of electrical power is about 2060 MW (88% hydro, 11% diesel and 1% thermal). This production is equal to 10% of the demand. For this reason, the country is dependent on the imports of petroleum to meet its requirements. Table 1 : Electricity production sources global-country basis [1][2] With only 15% of the population having access to electricity, there is a significant bias between electricity supply of urban and rural population: 80% of urban areas have access to electricity, whilst only 2% of rural areas habitants have access to electricity [3]. As it can be observed in the Figure 2, the average electrification rate in developing countries is 72%. Therefore, there is a gap of more than 57% to achieve the target for developing countries, specially for Ethiopia. Although there are a number of private, municipal and cooperative owned small scale power producers in areas not served by the utility their combined contribution is estimated not to exceed 2% of EEPCo's capacity. EEPCO runs two systems; the Interconnected System (ICS) and the Self Contained System (SCS). The ICS, which generates more than 98 percent of total EEPCO supply capacity, is supplied mainly from a set of large hydro systems with some thermal back up. The SCS is a much smaller system of decentralized mini-grid and off-grid systems supplied by small hydro plants and diesel generators. The technologies used by the ICS and SCS are shown in the table 2. [4] The ICS is currently becoming bigger because of the interconnection of SCS to ICS. In 2010, a total of 5, 163 towns were connected by EEPCo. The electricity generation increased 53% from 2005 to 2010. This results in a shortage of electricity, because of a slant between the grid extension and the load of power generated. Transmission and distribution losses are around 20%. This event causes that the users willingness to pay increases significantly in isolated systems. Nevertheless, Ethiopia's target was to supply 20% of the population with electricity by the year 2012. This is due to the 5 year Growth and Transformation Plan, launched in 2010 which aims to quadruple or even quintuple the country's current capacity and to connect 4 million costumers by 2015. The plan includes the installation of the following new plants: -8 hydropower plants with 8, 737 MW of total capacity. -7 wind plants with 866 MW of total capacity. -70 MW geothermal power plant of total capacity. Keeping this plan in mind, the alternative scenario is developed. If this scenario is implemented, it will meet Ethiopia's energy demand which will improve the economic growth of the country. # a) Hydro Potential The total hydro potential of Ethiopia is 45, 000 MW [6]. Which is the second highest potential in Africa (after Congo). Approximately 30,000 MW hydro power is economically feasible[8-9]. Current production is of only 2.5% of the potential. It is also important to mention that a vast potential is not only given for large hydropower projects, but also for small scale schemes. The potential from micro hydropower schemes is 100 MW, that could be developed on a land area of 200,000 km2. Most promising sites can be found in the western part of the country since suitable constant flows are prevailing, figure 4. Though, the drying seasons has to be taken into account because of the lack of water during this period of the year. Hydropower is the main source of electric power in Ethiopia. The exploitable hydro energy potential is estimated to be about 159TWh/year. Nearly 50% of this resource is in the Abay River Basin and 22% is in the Omo-Gibe River Basin. b) Solar Potential Ethiopia's solar potential has been shown in figure 5. The solar potential is 5 kwh/m2day[9]. Ethiopia receives a solar irradiation of 5000-7000 Wh/m2 according to region and season. Although the growth rate of the solar PV market has grown (from <5% since the early 1990s to 15 -20% in the last few years) it is still at an early stage. With an installed capacity of approximately 5MW and an estimated PV market potential of 52 MW, not even 10% is exploited. # c) Biomass A total of 30 MW of capacity surplus could be fed in the grid by sugar factories. Power production potential of landfill gas is estimated to be 24 MW. # d) Wind With wind resources with a velocity of 5-6(m/s), Ethiopia's wind potential is estimated to be 10,000 MW[6,9]. EEPCo is planning to develop seven wind sites that are in close proximity to the ICS by 2015. They will have a capacity between 50 and 300 MW. The installed wind power capacity would be approximately of 720 MW. In rainy seasons the hydropower potential is high whereas low winds prevail, vice versa hydropower potential is low in the dry season whereas the wind potential is high as can be seen in the figure 6. Based on available scientific information and experiences on the Rift geothermal system both in Kenya and Ethiopia, it is plausible to assume the presence of a huge geothermal energy base in Ethiopia. For the development of Ethiopia's alternative scenario to meet its energy demand, two technologies, as shown in figure 8, were selected as follows: -Hydropower plants (mycropower plants for the SCS system and hydropower plants for the ICS system) -Geothermal power plants. Hydropower Plants : The hydropower plants were chosen because of the highest potential of the country and the current low production as well as the possibility to develop large or small projects. Hydropower is the most abundant energy source of Ethiopia, it is thought to form the backbone of the country's energy sector development. Additionally, hydro is the cheapest potential amongst PV and wind. For this reason, hydro power can be selected as the best technology suitable. Geothermal Plants : The development of the alternative scenario involves the introduction of geothermal power plants that are feasible because they are located in the Ethiopian geothermal rift. Other technologies not considered : Despite of this, we were willing to introduce wind, but the wind availability was not sufficient in some areas to produce electricity, and in the areas where we have potential there were already transmission lines, which means that they would be suitable under ICS. # b) Description of the Elaborated Systems Self Contained System : We choose to install 36 hydropower plants with an average capacity of 10 MW distributed along the country where no ICS is available, Figure 9. The selected areas have hydro potential. Additionally, the small projects would offer the opportunity to initially start as SCS and then get connected to the grid. We selected to put this power plants near rivers. The gap to be fulfilled for the self contained system is of around .131 GW. The vast amount of the SCS hydro power plants was located near rivers. Hydro Plant : Additionally we add one big hydropower plant of 900 MW, Figure 10. This plant would be available in the west part of the country, because there is a very big potential for hydropower plant. Gibe IV would be of around 1472 MW. For this reason, our consideration of installing one plant of 900 MW is not by any chance out of analysis. As the new plant will be located near the line that exports electricity to Kenya, we can expect also to export electricity. # d) Capacity Installation in ICS After addition of 4 power plants in ICS, we see that there are no unmet demands in ICS in the year of 2013 and from 2018 to 2026, figure 15. The limitation of the analysis here is that we installed plants in the year of 2011 and 2012 but its effect goes to unmet requirements in the year of 2013 and from the year of 2018 to 2026. We see no change of unmet requirements in the other years. However, our target was not to reduce all the unmet demands in ICS but a little. Also due to increase export energy, we installed that plants in the ICS. # e) Unmet Demand in SCS of Ethiopia Moderate Scenario The figure 16 shows the unmet damands in the SCS area. We see that the unmet demands in the year of 2008 and 2030 are 0.01 million MWh and 4.21 million MWh respectively where the demands are increasing almost exponentially with the year. Our target in the Ethiopia alternative scenario was to meet all the unmet demands in the SCS area. After installing the small hydro plants in the SCS area we see that the unmet demands will be very small in few years. The figure 18 describes the unmet requirements in the Ethiopia alternative scenario. The table 4 explains the small unmet demands in some years. In our alternative scenario, we left these unmet demands, because these are small and sometimes to meet these small demands, the installation of new power plants will not be economically feasible. # h) Capacity and Reserve Margin The figure 19 describes the comparison between two scenarios for Ethiopia's electrical power capacity from the year 2008 to 2030. As we tried to reduce the unmet demands in the alternative scenario, its capacity is higher than the capacity in the moderate scenario. # Figure 19 : Capacitis in both scenarios The figure 20 shows the amount of reserve margin in the ICS area. This variable is generally only relevant for electricity generation modules. This variable is only reported if we have specified capacity data for the module. Reserve margin is defined as follows: Where, Module Capacity = Sum(Capacity * Capacity Value) for all processes in the module. Assuming that we have specified certain processes that will be added automatically using the Endogenous Capacity, then the actual reserve margin reported here should be greater than or equal to the planning reserve margin. This is because LEAP automatically adds new plants as needed in order to keep the reserve margin on or above the planning reserve margin. On the other hand, if plants are not being added automatically and if we have not exogenously specified sufficient capacity expansion, then it is possible that the actual reserve margin may fall below the planning reserve margin. From the figure 20, we see that the reserve mergin in alternative scenario is always greater than the reserve margin in the moderate scenario. # i) Exports The results in figure 21 explains the exports from ICS area in both scenario. We see in the bar chart that exports in alternative scenario are greater than moderate scenario one from the year of 2012 to 2017 and 2027 to 2030, also exports are equals in both scenario from the year of 2018 to 2025. The module balance in figure 22 explains domestic requirements, exports, inports, outputs and unmet demands. The unmet demands are always smaller than module outputs. We see that the exports are gradually decreasing, because in our scenario we selected domestic demands as priority that is why with the increase of domestic demands exports are decreasing. But if we select exports as priority then the export would be constant all through the years which is shown in figure 23. But the problem with export as priority that the unmet demands are always larger than the module outputs which may result in load shadding. In the BAU scenario, Ethiopia needs to import secondary fuel namely diesel for both ICS and SCS electricity generation. In the proposed alternative scenario, new plants have been considered based on country's own renewable resources. In case of ICS, the proposed power plants' capacity is more than the existing electricity deficit. # Figure 24 : Import -BAU Scenario As a result, in some cases LEAP has chosen to use the additional electricity from the new power plants instead of diesel based power plants due to less generation cost. Consequently, there is reduction of diesel import from other countries. Diesel import in BAU scenario, figure 24, is compared to diesel import in alternative scenario, figure 25. Because, according to the alternative plan, the additional amount of electricity will be exported to neighbor countries after meeting the domestic demand. Here, this is to be noted that for 'Priority Use of Output' of 'Transformation-Generation ICS-Output Fuel-Electricity' we chose 'Domestic Requirement' instead of 'Export'. So our export quantity didn't remain fixed rather varied. From 2008 to 2030, Ethiopia's Energy balance for each year reflects the changes in resources and transformations brought within the scenarios. For example, we can consider the energy balance of Ethiopia in 2012 for both the scenarios (please refer to Appendix -Table 6: Energy Balance for Ethiopia, 2012 -BAU Scenario and Table 7: Energy Balance for Ethiopia, 2012-Alternative scenario) In the year 2012, there is considerable amount of increase of production from hydro and geothermal sources in the alternative scenario compared to BAU scenario. Subsequently, import of diesel has reduced from 379 thousand barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) to 156 thousand BOE in the proposed scenario. On the other hand, export has increased from 903 thousand BOE to 1235 thousand BOE. For SCS, electricity generation from hydro has increased and from diesel has decreased. Electricity from coal power plant has reduced from 654 thousand BOE to 0. Total transformation in BAU was 1467 thousand BOE and it has changed to 3805 thousand BOE in the alternative scenario. Total demand for electricity is 3767 thousand BOE in both cases as no change was done from the moderate scenario. In the year 2012, there was unmet demand of 40 thousand BOE in case of SCS which has been totally diminished in the alternative scenario. The figures 28 and 29 show the financial comparison between the moderate and alternative scenarios. It is observed that the involved costs are less and the negative costs i.e. benefits are more in the alternative scenario. For example, in the year 2030, the benefit available in the BAU and alternative scenario is around 90 Mill US $ and 430 Mill US $ respectively. It means benefit would be around 5 times more than the BAU scenario. As no change was brought in the demand side, there is no involvement of cost also. It is seen that the collective benefits from production, import & export of resources are 309.6, 162.6 & 177.5 Million US $ respectively. It means though some amount would be spent for import, it will bring benefit equivalent to 162.6 Million US $ in the long run. Overall, after considering the benefits, cumulative cost involved is 1,036.2 Million US $ (discounted at 5% to the base year). To be mentioned here, there is no cost involved in environmental externalities for this green scenario, on the other hand, there will be considerable amount of GHG saving. According to the IPCC's 100 years' integration global warming potential factors, the total cumulative emissions of all greenhouse gases avoided by the alternative scenario are 0.5 Million Tonnes of Carbon equivalent. There was a coal power plant called 'Yayu Coal' in the moderate or business-as-usual scenario. In the alternative scenario, because of the environmental considerations, this plant was replaced by environment friendly geothermal power plant. The impact of this decision has been clearly illustrated in Figure 30 and 31. In the year 2012, when the coal power plant would likely be installed, GHG emission would be around 380 thousand tones CO2 equivalent. On the other hand, there is apparently no emission of global warming potential GHGs in the alternative scenario. Ethiopia is endowed with renewable energy resources. The alternative scenario focused on maximum utilization of this resource as a source of clean electricity for the country. There is abundant of sunshine all through the year in the country. But solar energy was not selected due to its high upfront cost. There are some potentials of wind energy also in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, that is limited to some areas only and there are lots of seasonal variations in production around the year. However, the country has many rivers with huge potentials of hydro energy. That's why, in the proposed scenario, hydro and geothermal were judiciously selected as the source of energy. In the business-as-usual scenario, there were some unmet demands of ICS electricity. The alternative scenario has fulfilled the gap and also increased export of electricity to neighboring countries. In case of SCS, there was unmet demand at every year. These gaps have been almost fulfilled in a conservative manner as the additional production would be wasted. Besides, there was one coal based plant in the business-as-usual scenario which has been replaced by geothermal power plant. This change has turned the alternative scenario a cleaner one compared to BAU with diminishing of global warming potential GHG emissions. Thus, our proposed alternative scenario is capable enough to meet the electricity demand of Ethiopia in a more reliable and sustainable way than the business-as-usual scenario. # ( ) Year 1![Figure 1 : Source of Electrical energy (TWh/year) around the world (2008) [1]](image-2.png "Figure 1 :") 2![Figure 2 : Electrification rates and population without access to electricity, 2008 According to Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo) electricity generation in 2010 was 3,981.07 GWh. Hydropower generates 88% of the electricity and thus is the country's dominating electricity source. The other sources for EEPCo energy generation are diesel and geothermal as shown in the figure 3.](image-3.png "Figure 2 :") 3![Figure 3 : Development of Energy Generation of EEPCo ICSs and SCS, Period 2005-2010 (in GWh) and share by fuel 2010](image-4.png "Figure 3 :") 45![Figure 4 : Mean Annual Water Surplus in Ethiopia](image-5.png "Figure 4 :Figure 5 :") 6![Figure 6 : Annual Mean Wind in Ethiopia and wind production compared to hydropower generation[4] ](image-6.png "Figure 6 :") 7![Figure 7 : Geothermal Ethiopia's energy base e) Geothermal Energy Ethiopia's geothermal resources are estimated to be 5 GW of which 700 MW are suitable for electric power generation [6-9]. They are primarily located in the Rift Valley, figure 7. Only one 7.3 MW geothermal has been commissioned so far but was shut down in 2002.Based on available scientific information and experiences on the Rift geothermal system both in Kenya and Ethiopia, it is plausible to assume the presence of a huge geothermal energy base in Ethiopia.](image-7.png "Figure 7 :") 8![Figure 8 : Approach for alternative scenario a) Aspects of the Selected TechnologiesHydropower Plants : The hydropower plants were chosen because of the highest potential of the country and the current low production as well as the possibility to develop large or small projects. Hydropower is the most abundant energy source of Ethiopia, it is thought to form the backbone of the country's energy sector development. Additionally, hydro is the cheapest potential amongst PV and wind. For this reason, hydro power can be selected as the best technology suitable.Geothermal Plants : The development of the alternative scenario involves the introduction of geothermal power plants that are feasible because they are located in the Ethiopian geothermal rift.Other technologies not considered : Despite of this, we were willing to introduce wind, but the wind availability was not sufficient in some areas to produce electricity, and in the areas where we have potential there were already transmission lines, which means that they would be suitable under ICS.](image-8.png "Figure 8 :") 9![Figure 9 : Proposed SCS plants](image-9.png "Figure 9 :") ![Figure 11 : Scenerio: Ethiopia moderate demand Ethiopia's moderate scenario, figure 11, describes the electrical energy requirement for next 30 years. From figure 11, it is seen that in 2008, the total demand(ICS and SCS) is 3.46 million which is increasing exponentially and becomes 29.86 million MWh in 2030. We did not change anything in the forcasted demand of electrical energy for Ethiopia in our alternative scenario. b) Outputs : Alternative Scenario](image-10.png "") 13![Figure 13 : Unmet requirement, ICS; Ethiopia moderate demand, Fuel: all fuels](image-11.png "Figure 13 :") 14![Figure 14 : Capacity added in ICS for alternative scenario, Capacity: all capacities We attempted to reduce the unmet demands in ICS from the year of 2011. For this reason, we added two power plants named Corbetti GPP and Tulu Moya and Dofan of capacity 75 MW and 100 MW respectively. Both were geothermal power plants. Again, we added another two plants in the year of 2012 where one named as Abaya GPP(geothermal plant) of capacity 100 MW and one named as Gilgel Gibe IV(hydro power plant) of capacity 900MW. Addition of these four plants are shown in figure 14.](image-12.png "Figure 14 :") ![Development of Alternative Scenario for Ethiopia's Electricity Sector by LEAP Software](image-13.png "F") 1215![Figure 12 : Transformation:outputs; ethiopia moderate demand](image-14.png "Figure 12 :Figure 15 :") 16![Figure 16 : Unmet demands in Ethiopia moderate scenario, Fuel: all fuels f) Capacity Installation in SCS We offered 35 small hydro plants of capacity 5MW and 10MW in different years in the period of year 2008 to 2030. The figure 17 shows the installation of power plants in different years and the table3shows the capacity added to the SCS area in our alternative scenario in the respenctive year according to the unmet demands.](image-15.png "Figure 16 :") 17![Figure 17 : Installatin of small hydro power plants in SCS area, Capacity: all capacities](image-16.png "Figure 17 :") 18![Figure 18 : Unmet demands in alternative scenario in SCS area](image-17.png "Figure 18 :") 20![Figure 20 : Actual reserve margin in ICS are for both scenario](image-18.png "Figure 20 :") 21![Figure 21 : Export of electricity from ICS in both scenario j) Module BalanceThe module balance in figure22explains domestic requirements, exports, inports, outputs and unmet demands. The unmet demands are always smaller than module outputs. We see that the exports are gradually decreasing, because in our scenario we selected domestic demands as priority that is why with the increase of domestic demands exports are decreasing.But if we select exports as priority then the export would be constant all through the years which is shown in figure23.But the problem with export as priority that the unmet demands are always larger than the module outputs which may result in load shadding.](image-19.png "Figure 21 :") 2223![Figure 22 : Module balance with domestic demands prority in alternative scenario](image-20.png "FFigure 22 :Figure 23 :") 25![Figure 25 : Import -Alternative Scenario b) ExportOne of the objectives of the alternative scenario was to fulfill the demand of electricity for ICS. Though the focus was not to boost up electricity export, slight increase of export is also observed, comparison of figure 26 and 27.](image-21.png "Figure 25 :") 262![Figure 26 : Export -BAU Scenario](image-22.png "Figure 26 : 2 F") 28![Figure 28 : All costs (domestic / foreign) -BAU](image-23.png "Figure 28 :") 29![Figure 29 : All costs (domestic / foreign) -Alternative Scenario b) Financial Investigation of the Alternative Scenario The cumulative cost and benefit of the proposed alternative scenario from the year 2008 to 2030 compared to Ethiopia's moderate demand in Million US Dollar is given on the table 5.](image-24.png "Figure 29 :") 30![Figure 30 : Global Warming Potential -BAU Scenario](image-25.png "Figure 30 :") 31![Figure 31 : Global Warming Potential -Alternative Scenario](image-26.png "Figure 31 :") 2 3g) Unmet Demands in SCS of Ethiopia Alternative Scenario 40132Year YearAlternativeEthiopia Moderatescenario(MW)demand(MW)200910020115020121002014400201610020171502018150201915020202002021200202330020245002026502027200202810020294002030100year Unmet demands in alternativescenario(Thousands MW)20089.0220090.3220111.87201337.0820228.0420284.76 50132Year © 2013 Global Journals Inc. (US) F Development of Alternative Scenario for Ethiopia's Electricity Sector by LEAP Software F Development of Alternative Scenario for Ethiopia's Electricity Sector by LEAP Software F Development of Alternative Scenario for Ethiopia's Electricity Sector by LEAP Software * Energy Balances for International Energy Agency 2010 2010 Non OECD Countries. Energy * World Energy Outlok International Energy Agency 2009 * GLegros IHavet NBruce SBonjour A Review Focusing on the Least Developed countries and Sub-Saharan Africa 2009 * Ethiopia Current Situation September 2011 * It is observed that the cost involved in generation ICS is 1,688.5 Million US $. Small hydro power plants were proposed for SCS generation In the long run, there would be benefits which is equivalent to 2.6 Million US $