Category: Science &Technology

{{Giant turbines churning in the wind are a rare sight in Africa – but that will not be the case for long.}}

Until now the meagre amounts of investment in African wind energy have predominantly come from governments and foreign donors.
But this is changing fast, say experts.

Private investors smell profit in beefing-up the continent’s over-stretched power grids and swarms of new wind turbines are soon expected to emerge.

If all plans on the table come to fruition, capacity will increase tenfold.

“When you look at the on-going and planned projects, you see actually over 50 percent of the projects being sponsored by the private sector,” said African Development Bank economist Emelly Mutambatsere.

Today wind makes up one percent of electricity production, or just 1.1 gigawatts.
But an additional 10.5 gigawatts is in the pipeline.

According to an African Development Bank study of 76 wind projects, two thirds are pending.

Liberalisation of electricity markets has helped prise open the sluice gates for investment.

“The state still plays a big role in a lot of the countries,” Mutambatsere told media. “But a number of countries have liberalised to some extent.”

North Africa – including Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco – have led the way. But sub-Saharan Africa is catching up.

This year saw the first large commercial wind farm in the region come on line, a 52 megawatt project in Ethiopia.

Further south, the continent’s heaviest carbon emitter South Africa is a striking example of the sector’s growth.

The coal-rich nation -gunning for an extra 18 gigawatts of capacity from renewables such as wind – has opened power production projects to private bidders for the first time.

The first bidding round of 28 projects drew $5 billion in investments, according to the energy ministry.

“There’s a huge boom going on in South Africa in wind and renewables,” said South African Wind Energy Association CEO Johan van den Berg.

“South Africa previously had eight operative wind towers or turbines and there’s about 250 under construction at the moment.”

Last year, investment in South African renewable energy increased in excess of 20,000 percent, he said.

Meanwhile in Kenya the $815 million, 300 megawatt Lake Turkana Wind Power Project is hoping to break ground in November.

With wind flow of 11.8 metres per second the project is “a dream” according to chairman Carlo van Wageningen.

According to Richard Doyle of renewable energy consulting firm 3E, tough conditions in key green markets like Europe have played a role in the pivot to Africa.

So too, the healthy returns promised in developing markets.

“There’s been a veritable flood of companies out of their home markets in Europe into developing economies generally and Africa is one of those focal areas.”

However, he added that any “boom” tag had to be qualified by recognising conditions elsewhere.

“If markets were less tight in Europe, would as many developers be in Africa? Almost certainly not,” he said.

And the Global Wind Energy Council secretary general Steve Sawyer says public financing will always play a role in smoothing out erratic investment flows.
However, he said, there was growing understanding among governments that “in order to create a sustainable energy system, a large degree of private investment is required”.

“That level of investment can only be achieved by creating the kind of policy environment which sufficiently reduces the risks to investors such that they are willing to do project finance,” he added.

With just 0.1 percent of the 2011 world market in Africa and the Middle East, the continent is still playing catch up.

Large-upfront costs mean wind is a long way away from overtaking dirtier but cheaper energy sources like coal and gas.

By 2030, wind is only expected to account for two percent of Africa’s power mix, according to the International Energy Agency.

Coal is set to remain king at 37 percent, followed by gas at 32 percent.
“It won’t become a dominant power source but it will become an important contributor to the energy mix,” said the bank’s Mutambatsere.

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{{After the much-publicised handing over of NigComSat-1R, the replacement for Nigeria’s lost communication satellite, the nation’s fledgling Space Programme narrowly escaped a second setback – not once, but twice.}}

Dr. Siedu O. Mohammed, Director General of the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), told The Guardian that NigeriaSat-2—the newly launched earth observation satellite — had a nearly disastrous encounter with onrushing electrically charged particles.

“Last December, and again early this year,” he revealed, in an exclusive interview, “phone calls woke me up, because a surging stream of high-speed charged particles was threatening our satellite. They were on a collision course with NigeriaSat-2, and were getting close.”

NASRDA’s engineers and scientists and their counterparts at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited, in the U.K. put their heads together quickly, he said, and maneuvered the spacecraft to save it.

The proliferation of orbiting debris, such as dead satellites, tools and pieces of metal, has long been recognised as a space hazard. But the ejection of particles from the Sun’s corona, during violent eruptions called “solar flares,” can also damage or even destroy a satellite.

Consequently, Mohammed explained, NASRDA has established a new department to study space weather: “Space weather” being the generic term for conditions arising from natural changes in the operating environment of orbiting spacecraft.

The Director General announced, as well, that NASRDDA would create a “powerful Desk for Space Debris Monitoring,” to sensitise the media and the general public to the gravity of the problem and coordinate its effort to develop an effective monitoring programme.

Said Mohammed, “NASRDA is discussing with a number of countries, as potential collaborators. We’ve held talks with Russia, because they have a very strong space debris monitoring team.”

Space debris, he continued, poses a threat, not only to satellites but also to our own security, here on the ground.

South Africa and Sidney Australia have had near misses from falling metal; and there are frequent meteorite strikes within Nigeria’s borders.

“It has happened in Bauchi several times, as well as in Sokoto. Last year, an object from space also fell in Benue State. We can’t prevent small pieces of asteroid from bombarding us. But there are larger objects out there, whose movements need to be monitored continuously.”

Mohammed averred further that, when construction of the Nigerian Radio Telescope at Nsukka was completed, monitoring space debris would be among its main tasks.

{{Their project might not sound like much: The college students on Wednesday launched a tiny model of a satellite the size of a Coke can on a big yellow balloon. It went aloft to a height of 165 meters (yards) and then came back down attached to a red parachute.}}

Yet in this developing West African country, ambitious organizers, who recently launched the Ghana Space Science and Technology Center, see the test as a sign of bigger things to come.

“We hope that this practical demonstration of what can be done by students like them will generate more enthusiasm, fire up their imagination to come up with more creative things, and show that it’s possible that they’ll one day be able to launch their own real satellite into orbit,” said Prosper Kofi Ashilevi, director of the space center that marked its one-year anniversary earlier this month.

The effort has drawn some skepticism, acknowledged Samuel H. Donkor, the president of All Nations University.

“They think it is a pipe dream, a waste of money,” said Donkor, who has directed $50,000 to the program.

But Ashilevi, the space center director, said it was essential for local universities to train students with a passion for space.

“Some wonder why we couldn’t concentrate on our problems of water, sanitation, health, all those things. I categorically disagree,” he said.

“Space will help African countries who are very serious with it to leapfrog their development because it cuts across all sectors of the economy.”

Experts say Ghana is probably a good five years or more from developing its own operational satellites, which could one day be used to confront everything from natural disasters to the smuggling of natural resources.

Wednesday’s project, though, started at All Nations University with just a big balloon to carry aloft the miniature model of a satellite, known as a Deployable CanSat.

The device reached a height of about 165 meters, just shy of their 200-meter goal.

Owen Hawkins, business development manager for Surrey Satellite Technology in the United Kingdom, called Wednesday’s project “very, very exciting.”

“Ghana is quite a small country and they’re already punching above their weight by doing things like that,” Hawkins said.

It was the first time Ghana has sent a Deployable CanSat into the air, said Manfred Quarshie, director of the Intelligent Space Systems Laboratory at All Nations University College in Koforidua.

Six students spent three months preparing the model, outfitting it with sensors, cameras and Global Positioning System technology, Quarshie said.

It was not without its fair share of challenges. The students initially hoped to launch the CanSat with a rocket, but discovered authorities would not give them permission to import one.

“They think you are going to use it as a missile, like a terrorist,” said Benjamin Bonsu, the lab’s 29-year-old project manager.

They eventually settled on lifting the CanSat with a balloon.

As it floated back to the ground, the device recorded temperature and air pressure readings that were read aloud to the cheering crowd of about 100 students and local officials. The descent lasted less than 30 seconds.

A second device failed to deploy, but Donkor, the university president, said that hitch had not detracted from the event.

“The students are quite excited and very happy,” he said. “There is a lot of enthusiasm throughout the country that we are even daring to do something like this.”

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