Solar and Wind Power Could Mitigate Conflict Surrounding Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in Northeast Africa

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Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam

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The mega-dam lies in Ethiopia, near the border with Sudan. It is Africa’s biggest hydropower plant. Credit: © Google

A brand-new research study reveals that a number of arguments in between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt around Africa’s biggest hydropower plant, the brand-new Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), might be relieved by enormously broadening solar and wind power throughout the area. Adapting GERD operation to support grid combination of solar and wind power would supply concrete energy and water advantages to all involved nations, producing local great deals.

“Our results call for integrated hydro-solar-wind planning to be taken up in the GERD negotiations,” states Sebastian Sterl, energy preparation specialist at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and KU Leuven in Belgium and lead author of the research study, released in Nature Energy.

For a number of years, political stress in between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia have actually been intensifying in a dispute surrounding Africa’s biggest hydropower plant: the almost total Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile. Ethiopia, which began filling GERD’s enormous tank in 2020, states it requires GERD’s electrical power to raise countless its residents out of hardship. But Egypt is deeply worried by the mega-dam’s effects for the Nile river, considering that its farming depends totally on Nile water –Egypt raised this problem to the UN Security Council previously in 2020. Sudan, on the other hand, appears captured in between both sides. Ongoing African Union-led mediation speak to settle on long-lasting operation of the dam have up until now yielded little fruit. Certain tongues have actually even conjured up the looming danger of a “water war” in between Cairo and Addis Ababa.

Seasonal synergy

Sebastian Sterl, energy preparation specialist at KU Leuven and VUB and lead author of the research study, describes: “The Blue Nile is a highly seasonal river. The GERD’s reservoir is so large that it can store the river’s full peak flow and deliver hydropower at a stable rate throughout the year, removing the flow seasonality. This makes a lot of sense from the Ethiopian perspective, but it overhauls the natural timing of the water reaching Sudan and Egypt. Behind many disagreements around GERD lies the question of who, if anyone, should be allowed to exert such control over the Nile river.”

A group of scientists based in Belgium and Germany, led by Sterl, have actually now recognized an unexpected approach that might resolve numerous arguments around the dam simultaneously and benefit all 3 nations. The concept comes down to enormously releasing modern-day, tidy solar and wind power to work as an enhance to GERD’s hydropower. More concretely: the scientists propose that Ethiopia and its neighbours release massive solar and wind farms, work towards a regionally incorporated power grid, and after that settle on Ethiopia operating GERD in synergy with solar and wind power. This would indicate turbining less water on bright and windy days, and more water throughout cloudy, windless spells and at nighttime, to “firm up” the always-fluctuating solar and wind power.

“Regional cooperation in a common, Eastern African Power Pool could be key.”

The scientists understood that sunlight and wind in lots of areas of Ethiopia, Sudan and their eastern African neighbours have opposite seasonal profiles to the Blue Nile circulation. In these locations, the sun shines brightest and the winds blow greatest throughout the dry season. This “seasonal synergy” in between water, sun and wind lies at the heart of the scientists’ findings.

The research study discovered that, if GERD were run to support solar and wind power throughout the year – both per hour and seasonally – this would instantly indicate producing less hydropower throughout the dry season, and more throughout the damp season, without adversely impacting GERD’s annual typical power output. The water draining of the dam would then have a seasonality rather looking like the natural river circulation, with a clear peak in the damp season.

According to Sterl, if GERD were run in this method, “Essentially, Ethiopia would have all the expected benefits of a big dam – but for Sudan and Egypt, it would look as if the Ethiopians only built a modest, relatively small reservoir. There are many such reservoirs already on the Nile, so no country downstream of Ethiopia could really object to this.”

Regional cooperation

By fixing up celebrations around typical energy and water goals, the scientists recognized a minimum of 5 concrete advantages of such incorporated hydro-solar-wind preparation. First, Ethiopia might end up being Africa’s biggest power exporter while minimizing its reliance on hydropower and reducing its electrical power generation expenses on the long term. Second, intake of contaminating nonrenewable fuel sources in Sudan and other eastern African nations might be displaced by solar and wind power, supported by GERD. Third, thanks to the proposed operation plan of GERD, Egypt might get more water throughout dry years than previously and would not require to alter the operation of its own High Aswan Dam. Fourth, Ethiopia would make more effective usage of its mega-dam’s more than a lots turbines by regularly producing at peak power whenever solar and wind would be not available. And 5th, Nile river ecology throughout Sudan would be less impacted by the brand-new dam, as circulation seasonality is an essential part of rivers’ eco-friendly sustainability.

According to the authors, the whole eastern African area stands to contribute. “Ethiopia could theoretically go alone, using GERD to back up its own solar and wind power,” states Sterl. “But it would work much better if, say, Sudan were to join in – it has better solar and wind resources than Ethiopia, allowing for better hydro-solar-wind synergies and reducing the overall costs of renewable power generation. Egypt has great solar and wind resources too, as do Djibouti, South Sudan and other eastern African countries. Regional cooperation in a common, Eastern African Power Pool could be key.”

The outcomes of the research study recommend that incorporated hydro-solar-wind preparation might be an extremely intriguing alternative to talk about in the continuous GERD negotations in between Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. “You could call it a win-win situation,” states prof. Wim Thiery, environment scientist at VUB and co-author of the research study. “The entire region would benefit.”

Reference: “Linking solar and wind power in eastern Africa with operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam” by Sebastian Sterl, Dalia Fadly, Stefan Liersch, Hagen Koch and Wim Thiery, 8 April 2021, Nature Energy.
DOI: 10.1038/s41560-021-00799-5