Africa Continental Power System Masterplan

African Union has launched the Africa Single Electricity Market (AfSEM) on 3rd June 2021. Implementation of AfSEM will be supported by the Continental Power System Masterplan (CMP) currently being developed by the African Union Development Agency (AUDA-NEPAD). Together with the IAEA, IRENA is supporting the CMP initiative as officially endorsed modelling partner (IRENA press release).

IRENA’s CMP support is a multi-year programme under the aim to establish a long-term continent-wide planning process for power generation and transmission involving all five African power pools. The agency has been assisting AUDA-NEPAD and the five Power Pools with model building, data sharing and knowledge transfer to enable the creation of a smart power systems master plan that promotes access to clean, affordable, reliable and sustainable electricity supplies across the continent.

The CMP modelling team consists of experts from AUDA-NEPAD, African Union Commission, four (Eastern, West, Central and Southern) African Power Pools and country experts from North African region. IRENA and IAEA are providing them the on-job training on the use of all continent Africa model built using IRENA’s System Planning Test (SPLAT) models. Including a technical session held weekly with modelling partners to assist on operational aspects; the CMP modelling team is receiving a structured training programme consisting of a MESSAGE e-learning course and a series of four week long trainings:

• CMP Training week 1 (20-24 June 2022, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia)
• CMP Training week 2 (14-18 Aug 2022, Cairo, Egypt)
• CMP Training week 3 (21-25 Nov 2022, Bonn, Germany)
• CMP Training week 4 (13-17 March 2023, Kigali, Rwanda)

IRENA’s CMP support builds on agency’s energy planning capacity building efforts in Africa, Planning and Prospects for Renewable Power report series, and Long-Term Energy Scenarios network, which provides insights related to experience and good practice in Africa.

First CMP training week was hosted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 20–24 June. The training was joined by members of CMP modelling team.

This workshop followed after a MESSAGE eLearning course organized by IAEA on 9-13 May 2022. In this workshop, the participants learnt how key elements of the SPLAT-Africa model are represented in the MESSAGE modelling framework, through lectures and hands-on sessions. The CMP modelling team was enabled to achieve the first milestone of calibrating the SPLAT/MESSAGE model to the current data and statistics. See training agenda for details.

Second CMP training workshop week was hosted in Cairo, Egypt on 14–18 August, 2022. The training was joined by members of CMP modelling team.

Prior to this workshop, the CMP modelling team fully configured the base year scenario inputs as per the most updated data and stats available from the Power pools. In the workshop, the participants achieved the 2^nd milestone of developing the base case scenario and how to interpret the scenario results. See training agenda for details.

Third CMP training workshop week was hosted in Bonn, Germany by IRENA on 21–25 November, 2022. The workshop was joined by members of CMP modelling team.

In this workshop, the participants learnt: (1) how to run all continent model carrying detailed power system expansion models for 50 countries; (2) how to develop alternative scenarios of interconnecting national grids at intra-regional and continent wide scale; and (3) how to visualize the big datasets of model results using SPLAT interface, a dedicated excel widget and web based dashboard. See training agenda for details.