IRENA-Swaziland Energy Planning Capacity-Building Programme: Scenario Building

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the Kingdom of Swaziland’s government held a strategic long-term energy planning training course in Manzini on the use of SPLAT-SW, the System Planning Model for Swaziland.

The training was part of a 10-month programme – the IRENA-Swaziland capacity building programme on strategic long-term energy planning – that followed the data preparation meeting in April 2016 and the MESSAGE software distance-learning in June 2016.

The distance learning programme for the MESSAGE software was provided at the courtesy of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Planning and Economic Studies Section.

The two week training was led by IRENA experts and attended by energy planning professionals from the Ministry of Natural Resources and Energy, Swaziland Electricity Company, Swaziland Energy Regulatory Authority, and the Central Statistical Office.  

The training agenda covered the following topics:

• A review of energy technology data
• Development of a reference energy database
• The techno-economic concepts behind a least-cost optimisation model
• Identification of renewable energy zones
• Analysis of renewable energy generation profiles
• Analysis of electricity load profiles
• Development of future energy policy scenarios using the SPLAT-SW model
• Comparison of policy scenarios

On the final day of the training course, the working team presented to the Steering Committee three pathways and preliminary results of eight scenarios formulated using SPLAT-SW model. These addressed critical energy policy issues in Swaziland, including planned coal power generation development, renewable energy targets, self-sufficiency of electricity generations and balanced development of hydro and biomass resources.

The team developed detailed milestones towards completion of scenario development and analysis, as well as an outline of an energy sector masterplan document.

The next 2 week training course, milestone 4, is scheduled for September 2016, with the aim of finalising the draft master plan.

Scope/features of the SPLAT-Swaziland model incorporated:

• Seven demand sectors (agriculture, sugar industry, other industry, transport, commercial, urban residential, rural residential).
• Electricity, cooking fuels, transport fuels, industrial thermal energy use.
• Five solar photovoltaic zones, eight wind zones characterised with different resource qualities and generation profiles.
• Five seasons in a year, two types of days (week days and weekends), up to ten divisions during a day to represent electricity load profile, time of use tariff, and renewable energy generation load profiles.
• Over 60 energy conversion and transportation technologies explicitly modelled.

See the IRENA-Swaziland Capacity-Building ProgrammeAgenda