Selected Ethiopian Rivers- ACase Study In The North- Assessment of Micro Hydro Power Potential of West Part of the Country
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Date
2011-03
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Ethiopia is a country situated in the horn of Africa with a total population of 80 million of which 85% is living in rural areas where access to modern electricity is difficult, with electrification status negligible and being < 1% [2, 3]. These communities are settled farther away from the national grid and are sparsely populated which makes extending the national grid to them uneconomical because of the high cost of transmission and the very low load factor. However, improving the life style of the population as well as the economy of a country will be difficult without energy especially modern energy systems. For their day to day life these rural people are using kerosene, fire wood, cow dung and other traditional fuels which have the problem of high and day-by-day increasing price and negative environmental effect because of deforestation and soil erosion. However, if these communities are supplied with modern electricity from renewable energy resources, their life will be improved and the environment will be protected from damage and this is the basic idea for this thesis. In this thesis, assessment of micro hydropower (MHP) potential of selected rivers is done. The selected rivers are, “Jedeb”, “Temcha” and “Gilgel_Abay” for the communities living in the villages called “Belem‟na”, “Muketin” &“Yewubesh”, and “Killaj” respectively. Some of the data for this work are gathered from Ministry of Water & Energy of Ethiopia (MoWE) and the rest is collected/ measured from field work. Some part of the data from MoWE is treated with ArcGIS software. Local load estimation for each of the villages is done with lighting, cocking and radio &TV loads considered as home loads and pumping, church and school lighting considered as general community loads and all these loads are scheduled appropriately. HOMER is used for designing and simulating the general system of each village. The simulation result shows that the generated electricity is more than enough to supply the local loads considered with an excess energy of at least 50% of the generated energy and this shows that the systems are tolerable for this amount of demand increase in the future.
Key words: Assessment, hydropower potential, micro hydropower, HOMER, small scale power generation, renewable energy.
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Keywords
Assessment, hydropower potential, micro hydropower, Homer, Small scale power generation, Renewable energy