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dam-l renewables site on web/LS
from the Energy for Rural Development web site
(http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~rael/projects.html)
Biomass Energy for Sustainable Economic, Social, and Environmental
Development in Eastern Zimbabwe
ABSTRACT
Biomass Energy for Sustainable Economic, Social, and Environmental
Development in Eastern Zimbabwe is an applied research project based in the
Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory of the Energy and Resources
Group at the University of California, Berkeley. Its purpose is to promote
sustainable biomass energy management for positive economic development in
the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe. Although its focus is on Eastern
Zimbabwe, if successful it promises to be a model for the integration of
large-scale and community/household-scale sustainable energy and ecological
management in a number of developing nations. The project will consist of
testing, evaluating, and implementing methods for sustainable power
generation using the wood-waste products produced by several large sawmills
operating in the Manicaland region, near the border of Mozambique.
Currently, over 60,000 tons of this biomass waste is produced annually. The
project's principal objectives will be to examine the technical and
economic feasibility of the available biomass energy generation alternative
technologies, their effect on the forest-management practices, and the
social implications for this region. We will work closely with the local
sawmills, community groups, municipalities, NGOs, and the national utility
to implement and evaluate the potential of various bioenergy technologies
while building the local capacity to implement, maintain and manage biomass
conversion systems. The project is estimated to run 36-months and has
received its basic funding from the Shell International Sustainable Energy
Initiative.
Project Background: Energy Needs and the Waste Resource Opportunity
The purpose of this project is to evaluate, test, and then implement
several methods of sustainable power generation using wood waste produced
by several large sawmills operating in the Manicaland region of Zimbabwe,
close to the border of Mozambique. Currently these plants produce in excess
of 60,000 tons of waste annually. This amount of biomass could yield as
much as 10 MW of usable power. While a small fraction (~10%) of it is
pelletized and consumed in the process steam boilers of one factory, the
vast majority of this wood waste is burned in the open air. Additionally,
long-term projections estimate that the waste produced will more than
double by 2015. This project has the strong potential of this project to
provide sustainable power and address a major inefficiency in
plantation/sawmill production.
Mutare, Zimbabwe
The timber industry in Zimbabwe is almost entirely based on plantation
timber, whose production is dominated by three large organizations
producing about 87% of the national output. Plantation forests occupy about
0.02% of the total land area of Zimbabwe, comprising 80,000 ha of pine,
24,000 ha of eucalyptus and 14,000 ha of wattle, the majority of which are
in the Eastern Highlands. The timber industry is the largest industry in
the Manicaland province and employs more than 15,000 people directly. Saw
milling is the largest sector of the industry and is currently experiencing
a boom. New mills focus on maximizing production of prime timber and
minimizing off-cuts and resultant sawmill waste. The pulp, paper and board
industries have generally not kept pace with the growth in sawmill
activities. Consequently, the demand for chips is less than the amount of
chips and other wastes produced. While some sawmills have been designed to
use a portion of the waste in their boilers waste disposal remains one of
the biggest challenges facing the industry and local municipalities. This
has given rise to open-air incineration and dumping in municipal landfills,
contributing to local air pollution and global carbon emissions. When
permission for dumping in municipal landfills is not granted, communal
lands have been illegally used. The Timber Producers Federation of Zimbabwe
promotes and protects the interests of all timber producers in Zimbabwe,
however increased input by local communities and households is still very
much needed.
Lumber produced by Border Timbers
In addition to waste disposal, another problem facing the timber industry
and local communities is the electricity tariff rates in Zimbabwe, which
are considered too high for many businesses and households. This raises the
possibility of utilizing the wood wastes for direct electricity generation
at the sawmills. Couple this with sustainable biomass management practices
in the forest plantations and in community and household managed forest
zones and we have a situation that will benefit each group. We will
investigate the advantages of centralized biomass energy conversion
supported by sawmill industry and community inputs of fuel and the
resulting distributions of power or fuels in solid or liquid form. This
scheme will be compared with distributed generation schemes (mixed small-
and large-scale combustion) coupled with local and regional transmission in
mini-grids or via power sales to Zimbabwe Electrical Supply Authority
(ZESA), the national utility.
To date there has been considerable interest in biomass to energy
conversion projects in Zimbabwe by several groups, particularly for wood
waste (e.g., Chimanimani Sawmill Association, Global Energy Systems). Yet,
although promising plans have been drafted they have so far stopped short
of actual implementation. This is at least partially due to a lack of
capital, lack of technical training, and a lack of staff or community
involvement to provide low-cost management of the biomass fuel.
----------------------
Second Project:
Photovoltaics Commercialization Support Project (East Africa) Kenya is the
hub of an active and internationally important regional market for
photovoltaic (PV) solar home systems. Over 100,000 systems and more than 2
MWp have been installed in Kenya over the past decade. As a result, a
recent wave of grants and development assistance programs have targeted
photovoltaics, with East Africa as one of the primary target regions.
Important programs are currently in place or about to be implemented to
support the PV industries in Indonesia, Ghana, Mexico, Kenya, Morocco,
Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Critical to the maturation and sustainability
of the international and regional PV industries are: (1) an understanding
of the performance history of systems currently in use in the field; (2) an
expanded training capacity to support local entrepreneurs, vendors,
installers, and PV service companies as well as consumers of PV systems.
The work described here is from a joint project between RAEL and Energy
Alternatives AFRICA (EAA) of Nairobi, Kenya. The project was made possible
with generous funding from the Dexter Trust. In this project we evaluated
the performance and condition of single junction amorphous silicon (a-Si)
modules used in PV systems installed in Kenya, and used this opportunity to
provide additional training and market analysis opportunities for local
East African renewable energy entrepreneurs. We carefully surveyed a-Si PV
systems and measured PV module performance in each site. We analyzed the
data in order to establish the survival rate and performance of a-Si
modules in field operating conditions and to identify equipment and
institutional options that could benefit the private PV industry and the
end-user community in East Africa. We are sharing the results with solar
rural electrification projects, manufacturers, dealers and end-users as
well as the international development community through publications,
correspondence, and regional workshops.
This project meets three key needs in the emerging market for solar home
systems: (1) an immediate need for accurate information on photovoltaic
home system performance both as the systems age and as a way to compare
actual versus advertised performance; (2) provides a field-based
collaborative training opportunity for local entrepreneurs, emerging
researchers, and community participants; and (3) more generally, this work
provides a tested model for the evaluation of system performance that can
be adapted and adopted by PV programs worldwide.
A second phase of this project will be to integrate the system performance
data into a larger study to evaluate the future of public sector,
multinational donor, and private-sector photovoltaic commercialization.
RAEL and Energy Alternatives AFRICA (EAA) co-hosted a workshop in Nairobi,
Kenya entitled, "Workshop on Small Solar Electric Systems:
Market Opportunities in East Africa," on January 18, 2000. Arne Jacobson, a
Ph.D. student in RAEL, presented a paper on the performance of amorphous
silicon PV modules in Kenya.
A paper of the project's results will also be presented at the American
Solar Energy Society (ASES) Conference, June 16-21, 2000, Madison,
Wisconsin.
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Lori Pottinger, Director, Southern Africa Program,
and Editor, World Rivers Review
International Rivers Network
1847 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, California 94703, USA
Tel. (510) 848 1155 Fax (510) 848 1008
http://www.irn.org
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