Environmental influences on Electricity Reliability in Uganda’s Grid System.

Abstract

This study investigated the environmental factors that influence the reliability of grid electricity at the generation subsystem in Uganda The systems reliability theory and the auto regressive distributed lag ARDL model were used to estimate the effects of hydrology levels of Lake Victoria and rainfall on both the frequency and duration of power outages on the Ugandan power grid network Both the short and long run effects were estimated and the findings revealed that hydrology levels of Lake Victoria significantly affected grid electricity reliability in the generation subsystem of the Ugandan power grid network in both the short and long runs On the other hand rainfall significantly affected the generation grid electricity reliability in only the short run implying that rainfall effects on grid electricity reliability on the generation subsystem do not spill over onto the long run The study recommends proper management of lake Victoria and other water resources so that reliability of grid electricity at the generation subsystem is not disrupted by the environmental factors under study