IRENA-Swaziland Energy Planning Capacity-Building Programme: Masterplan Development

Manzini, Swaziland

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and the Kingdom of Swaziland’s [1] government held a two-week training course on strategic long-term energy planning in Manzini that focused on finalising the SPLAT-SW model and energy planning scenarios and on finalizing the draft national energy master plan document.

The training course was part of the IRENA-Swaziland capacity building programme on strategic long-term energy planning. It built off the data preparation meeting in Swaziland in April 2016, the MESSAGE software distance-learning in June 2016 (provided at the courtesy of the International Atomic Energy Agency), and the first two-week national training course in July 2016 that focused on development and use of the SPLAT-SW model.

The training course 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 that jointly constitute the national working team for the capacity building programme.

In preparation of the training course the national working team held regular coordination and work meetings to draft sections of the energy master plan document, including results of the scenarios. This included a working team retreat in September 2016.

At the outset of the training course, the draft of the master plan document was reviewed with all members of the working team and the IRENA experts, and remaining gaps and necessary changes identified. The remainder of the training was dedicated to working on jointly addressing those gaps and changes.

The detailed training agenda covered the following topics:

  • A review of the assumptions in the SPLAT-SW, especially with regard to hydro availability, and technical and economical parameters of power plants
  • Fine-tuning of the SPLAT-SW model, including a review of data and assumptions, including on the costs of grid expansion and adjustment of the optimal solution
  • The refinement of demand side assumptions in the LEAP model
  • The creation of an SEforAll scenario, incorporating all of the technologies foreseen in the master plan document
  • A number of sensitivity analyses based on all major scenarios, and development of excel files with effective capacity factors, generation costs of each unit and screening curves.

On the final day of the training, all of the materials (SPLAT-SW, LEAP models) and supporting excel files were distributed to training participants.

The detailed agenda of the training course can be found here.

Revisions of the draft energy master plan document continued within the working team, as supported by IRENA as necessary. The complete energy master plan document was presented to the Steering Committee in mid-2017. As next step, the Ministry of Energy hosted a national stakeholder workshop to present the results of the energy demand and supply analysis and to receive comments on the draft master plan.

See the IRENA-Swaziland Capacity-Building Programme.

[1] The Kingdom of Swaziland, now known as the Kingdom of Eswatini, officially changed its name on 19 April 2018.