Gambia’s water and electricity power house, Nawec has launched the country’s electricity sector roadmap that outlines short, medium and long-term measures.
The document casts a vision to modernize the country’s energy sector, which is currently in a precarious situation with old machinery that has been there for many decades. The blueprint has been endorsed by President Adama Barrow and his cabinet.
Since Mr Barrow’s government assumed power in January, the consumers in the Gambia are experiencing acute power and electricity shortage.
But, Fafa Sanyang, minister of Petroleum and Energy, said the launch of the roadmap is Nawec’s ultimate target to solve the ever standing demand for uninterrupted power and water supply in the country.
“We have just launched 20 megawatts in Brikama and expecting more,” he said.
“There are many international institutions that are interested to partner with Nawec but the proposal of the majority of them were not in the country’s favour. We are coming up with our mega resource to replace all the streetlights with energy bulbs.”
The Gambia’s power sector is in a precarious situation. Only 45 megawatts of generation capacity is available in the Greater Banjul Area (GBA) compared to at least 70 megawatts demand, meaning blackouts are pervasive.
There is real reason for hope with potentially game changing developments as the ability to import low-cost power via a regional interconnection is possible.
Update on the electricity sector roadmap originally prepared in 2015 is focused on the Least Cost Power Development Plan (LCPDP).
Baba Fatajo, Nawec’s managing director, said the update helped to prepare an Emergency Plan for 2017.
He said the roadmap objectives are targeted to minimize disruptions and blackouts on the network and restore the GBA generation to at least 70 megawatts of available capacity by the end of 2017, and kick off preparation for the first IPP.
Mr. Fatajo added that between 2018 and 2020 they are hoping to close the generation gap and investments in transmission and distribution and commissioning the first IPPs which will follow the scaling of generation to 300 megawatts of available capacity by 2025 and expand access.
Some month ago, Nawec promised to settle the water and electricity failure in the country by December 2017 and Mr. Fatajo said they still maintain that target and are optimistic there will be improvements.
Low energy light bulbs for the streets…OMG…Take your torch lol. I think this policy is pretty dim. {oops} 300 Megs by 2025. At least this target is about right. But no road map in this statement at all, only wishes. The only cost effective solution would be to{maybe} dam the River Gambia, as a joint venture with Senegal Mali and Bissau. But the cost to the environment would be harsh.
It might be worth while for the Hotel generators to plug into the electric system and generate electricity straight into the grid { and get paid for it } But only when the lights are on…small but helpful. Also Government could subsidise home /village generators. A few biomass plants would also go along way>> they run off very cheap Miscanthus.
NAWEC is clearly engaging in damage control here.
This is the same NAWEC that promised the Gambian people, in May-June 2017, that by December 2017, blackouts and water shortages will be a “Thing of the Past”.
It appears that this road map is charting out a map into uncertainty.
In the Minister’s (NAWEC’s) own words,
“The Gambia’s power sector is in a precarious situation. Only 45 megawatts of generation capacity is available in the Greater Banjul Area (GBA) compared to at least 70 megawatts demand, meaning blackouts are pervasive”. And I may also add that water shortages will continue into the foreseeable future since current demand far outstrips supply from traditional sources.
Water from Casamance to the Kombos?
So, if we assume, a killer assumption at that, that NAWEC attains a generation capacity of 70 MW in 2018, transmission losses may further reduce the net power output to Gambian consumers So we are not really out of the woods yet? Are we?
No one is against NAWEC engaging in public relations campaigns and damage control but the senior management must commit themselves to speaking the truth to the Gambian people and stay away from feeling peoples’ pulses in the attempt to tailor political messages that may, in Gambian parlance, be palatable, to consumers.
Tell it like it is folks. Where you couldn’t meet the targets, come out with the facts and cut out this business of “TABASS NYABASS” and half truths.
There’s a lot of benefit in partnering with private operators/citizens that can sell excess power into the grid if they’ll be paid fairly, transparently and in a timely manner.
Oooh! Andrew you kill me this morning with the perfect expression ‘TABASS NYABASS”. That aside you are so right specially pointing to the fact there is excess generating capacity out there (hotels) that can connect to the grid and get paid for consumption. Mike also buttress the point and many other people have highlighted this fact but NAWEC guys will not listen and have a different agenda.
In my layman view I truly believe that NAWEC should come up with a simple policy guideline accepting connection to the grid and get paid.
NAWEC should mainly concentrate on the transmission and client connections and management. PERIOD.
A simple policy guideline “with purchase pricing structures” OPEN to all will soon attract IPPs he spoke about into practice? When will the GODS of darkness agree to give in to the GODS of light. LOL.
Please NAWEC shake it.
Can someone help us with a website that we can find the full “Roadmap document”? Some enterprises would like to access it.
Again I will insist on NAWEC that the IPP terms and conditions be produce URGENTLY to avail those interested to prepare their feasibility studies.
Thank you.
Go to: “nawec.gm”, then under “Customer care”, look for “downloads”. You can download the document from there.
Thanks Bax.
By the way where is Maxs our UDP diehard?
Max is afraid of Jollofnews. He’s more comfy on the familiar surroundings of Kaironews. He is now a total UDP apologist. You know, the type that “sees no evil” and “hears no evil”.
Lol I wonder how Max will handle a future duel Barrow vs Darboe for a UDP ticket?
I never ever thought Demba Jawo….would allow his skills to be miss used and abused. This is a blind and secretive government that hides it’s uselessness in talking the talk, photo opportunities and disguised donors, as pro-active policies. But at least the killings have stopped. The only growth is in foreign donations and high value loans. Gambia with under 2 million citizens should have policies that can be workable easily and cost effective.
It is not needful of Rocket Science. They gather in a crowd to conceive a single thought. What an unproductive waste of brains, wages and unfulfilled promises..
So what’s fresh.?
Jack; google Wikipedia….on wind turbines. It will give you all you need to know.
I was invited to John Moores University to talk to scientists, about raising a team from the University to explore fossil fuels for Gambia. It was one of those trade initiatives I was driving, back in 2002. Unfortunately I could not find support from the APRC government. Like all the trade initiatives I raised through Business Partners UK{ the government’s trade arm} I picked up some knowledge/ Enough to “sell” the idea.The University and Trade Partners were very frustrated and became even more so. One of the primary idea’s was the growing of Miscanthus to generate a Biomass Plant. I believe Gambia now has one and I think it cost around $ 30 million dollars. But I think Gambia would need 20 of these as part of the overall solution. But this is my guess. At $2 million dollars for one Wind driven turbine, you can understand why the Barrow government are Lost for realistic words to overcome this>>> the most important component to drive economic growth. If Gambia had 30 million people and increasing Gross Domestic Product, You could set aside the year on year surplus growth to fund the project??? Which in turn through increased industrial output would also provide increased taxation. Your government is between a rock and a hard place, simply because if it were a registered company there would be reasonable grounds to suggest it is trading whilst being insolvent. AS such it would be liable to be struck off as a going concern. But this is a government that is totally responsible for the collection of the people’s taxes and raising cheap loans to fund increased GDP and the health and well being and security of all citizens. My suggestion to dam the River Gambia as a joint cost adventure with neighbouring countries is to pool the financial and commercial requirements of all as equal partners in generation all there generating needs and to sell the surplus…further afield. Hydro electric is cheap sustainable energy, but the cost of the project would not come cheap in the short term. The environmentalists, as always where flooding of arable land is concerned, would have severe reservations for this. I don’t envy the government, for the daunting task ahead. I think the problem has been around for a long time, and no doubt previous governments have looked at it and then walked away except to tinker a bit here and bit there. You see you will never attract the larger industrial companies without guaranteed cheap and sustainable energy supply.
For government to be suggesting a plan and with it a viable solution, is less than convincing. They have said there have been international offers of help, but these were declined as being unfavourable to The Gambia. WE can all make suggestions and yes all these wise additions and innovations have a place. But my own opinion is that I think there will be this situation for many years to come.
I will do more research about wind turbines and mechanical power grid to more understanding and why it took Gambia government so long to solve this issues.
NAWEC outsourcing electricity from neighbouring Senegal to fill up the unmet demand for electricity throughout the country, is a dangerous foray into the unknown. Will NAWEC be able to pay the huge bills from Senelec?
Mike, if you do your research well you would have known about the OMVG Energy project. This is a joint hydroelectric project between Gambia, Senegal, Guinea and Guinea Bissau, work on which has been going on for decades. The 20 mega watt coming to Brikama is part of that project. The Energy sector in the country has been neglected for over four decades, it will be difficult to solve it in five years and definitely impossible to solve within a year. This road map is certainly not perfect but if we as a country have had this in Jawara and later Jammeh’s time, perhaps energy crisis would not have been our most pressing problem currently. As for hotels connecting to the national grid, I think you are deliberately trying to simplify it just to fit your own narrative. Mike, even here in the UK one does not just connect to the national grid. First there has to be an expert survey to assess your own energy requirement and its the surplus energy you produce that is fed into the national grid. You will also have a specially fitted meter to measure the net electricity you generate. I doubt if there are many hotels that are producing more electricity than they need and the same goes for individual solar panels at private residencies. Furthermore, the laws have to be changed to allow for such cooperations to happened. There is already an agreement with World Bank to have all the hospitals fitted with solar panels, this will allow the national grid to have extra capacity to supply for households and businesses. Supplying to the national grid does not bring quick returns so I would be surprised if businesses would be interested in investing and waiting years to realize any meaningful return . For some one who professes to be interested in Gambia’s best interest , you seem to know very little about a lot of things or are you just pretending? If you are half the businessman you claim to be, you will do more research than relying on news headlines. You ridiculed NAWEC for suggesting using low energy light bulbs yet that is exactly what all councils are doing in the UK. Hypocrite thy name is Mike Scales.
In 2014 NAWEC was given a grant of more than $30 Million by the AFDB. What happened to that money?
Mnnn interesting comments…Let me ask you both the same questions.
How much would it cost to generate Your Government’s target generating production of 300 megs. ?
How long will it take to reduce the debt to GDP ratio of 120% to say 70%.?
How much has the New Gambia borrowed since February and what are the terms and the interest rates the Gambian taxpayers have signed up to ?
Bare in mind Inflation is at LEAST 9% and growth is 2.5%
The answers to these questions are very basic….So come on Jack and Jill….Let’s hear it for the boy’s.
Guys help me here. How big is California compare to the Gambia? Am sure pretty bigger, so if that state could be powered by solar fields what about this one Kabilo.
I am wondering what happen to all that money coming from the EU and some other places after the political impasse. won’t it be a fund to tap in to solve the current electrical and water problem. It is time to bury all those generators and concentrate on renewable energy for us to say Bingo.
The money from the EU is only to support Gambia’s budgetary deficit. That is the money the government needs to perform its daily functions and tasks.{ Balance of payments} Gambia also has a significant trading deficit with the rest of the world. Gambia roughly imports twice as much as it exports. This means other nations industrial manufacturing or agri production or second hand {used} items such as domestic white goods or vehicles are dumped in gambia. Or are resold via gambia’s re-export traders.
Solar power is expensive to install and does not have a very good production per capita employed as diesel generators. Wind power and wave power has a similar high installation cost, with break even target per capital outlay being at least 10 to 15 years. Biomass plants are fed by the growing and harvesting of miscanthus. The problem here is you need to sow many many hectares with product, taking up prime agri land. Even if Gambia struck oil,,,,it would still have to reprocessed thousands of miles away by the larger reprocessing refinery’s. Though the tax revenue would finance all Gambia’s energy and water needs.
Silly Jack and his conspiracy theories. whoahaha.
Close down the hotels with there smelly diesel generators. Close down the airport with their multi carbon emitting jet engines. Stop importing old Mercedes taxi’s with their diesel polluting engines. Stop all cargo vessels with their dirty diesel engines.Stop all heavy goods vehicles with their stinking polluting engines. Ban all diesel engined tractors.
Then go for electric engines>>>oops but there’s no electric.
What about gas turbines ? >>>oops there’s no gas.
Ok then try 20,000 solar panels…That should give you enough to power The Statehouse for 6 months of the year.If there was an easy option it would have been done decades ago. There is no easy solution.
If the government can reduce its debt burden, by significantly increasing its Gross Domestic Product thereby increasing growth whilst reducing inflation and creating a surplus to invest in infrastructure, jobs, incomes and exports. There would be “light” at the end of this dark tunnel.
Concern Citizen,
The EU funds have gone in th sewage. This is the hallmark of INEFFICIENCY, INEPTITUDE, CORRUPTION, INFLUENCE-PEDDLING and unrealistic planning. The root causes of decadence and unproductivity. When the money from the EU and China came in during the hey days of the INEFFICIENT “coalition” administration, their thought was to make the DINKENDO headway. Thus, acquire lucrative houses, expensive attire to wear, go to Mecca on pilgrimage, get maids for their wives, send their children abroad for schooling, use the government PAJEROS to commute their wives and children to school and at every YAI KOMPIN gathering, shuttle around Europe, the Far East and America, pay reverence to their Marabouts and carry out all the hallmark of retrogressive activities that would deeply bite into the EU/China monies.
We either send this bunch of very USELESS and SELFISH administrators to packing or we remain decadent!
Normal Jack; It is a historic fact that the great western economies grew through the industrial revolution through coal fired steam generators. China which you allude to has fueled its own economic miracle through coal fired energy and continues to choke its citizens. Trump has reopened its productive coal mines in his America first policy and had dithered over the Paris climate change agreement. Green energy is very expensive. You have seen governments around the world try to convert to clean energy to satisfy the clean environmental pacifists. But now you see a considerable rethink as global competition for cheap energy is overtaking the Green lobby.
My argument for Gambia has always been an economic one. One that is pragmatic and deliverable. I think the Gambia should approach energy from a local standpoint and not a national position. I would take each village and town as separate issues and supply grant aided generators for domestic use. I would channel available power output to safe designated industrial areas…or manufacturing businesses and grow the manufacturing or service industries, to jump start the economy. Businesses pay tax, buyers pay tax, suppliers pay tax. Employees pay tax.
Just 10 new businesses could generate enough tax to significantly reduce poverty, loans, and International dependency.. 100 new businesses could turn Gambia into a land of opportunity.I think then we could discuss clean energy, once Gambia introduces a new system of self dependency and not to live anymore on international welfare and loans from the happy bankers.
and Jack: you are talking to the wrong man about England and car pollution. I drive a Maserati Gran Turismo….with a 5 litre Ferrari straight 8 engine. The my garage does insist it emits less carbon emissions than a Ford Fiesta.{smile}
Jack…your learning rapidly….Why not start a shop to sell and service washing machines, cookers and dishwashers. ? and bespoke Kitchens window and doors. Then you can buy a Maserati and live large….lol
You can be the one who kick started the consumer economy/
Jack, I for one envy some of you & your youthful energies you got, to spend; why not take on Bajaw & Buba & make them accountable when they gone astray; for they, the same as you & us all here will have sleepless nights when the Westfield occupy turned out violent & got hijacked by elements for example, with the threat of the illicit arms laundered into our country & the subregions by yaya devil murderer; not somebody who could celebrate in a pub, for example, because couldn’t even manage to secure a deal on the old defunct Observer newspaper…
I’m far from blame you though; the Gambian will always innocently presume everyone genuinely until disappointed; ‘Amadou Samba is the Gambia most successful business man’ to Mike; now that the evil yaya devil is out, the Gambia is heaven on earth, where ‘living big’ is totally different; the Gambian assumption of immigration & migration are natural to destiny, facilitated by globalisation; but Mike knows what living big is with bombs about in Levenshulme & neighbourhood…
I for one have been invaluably opportuned to work as civil servant; & live in all regions of the country & know about much cultural aspects… Gambians, (including my small self) must stop lynching our Bilal for the fake Moses, Jesus or Mohammed; I have been to Bondali village Foni, where some of my boys went to get tipsy at a local rum seller only to be told the only palm wine in the house was yaya Jammeh’s idol shrine; while the boys tried talking the seller to avail them some tast a tinted glass numberless state car pulled outside; the man was quoted to retort that he wouldn’t have lived because that car would have to leave with either the palm & the seller himself for the jalang(o) sacrifice…
We must commit together to develop the Gambia within some short span of time; & this can’t be achieved in any instant automatic as being assumed by some but in fair order…
Rectification please – boys went to get tipsy at a local rum seller only to be told the only palm wine in the house was for yaya Jammeh’s idol shrine; while the boys tried talking the seller to avail them some taste a tinted glass numberless state car pulled outside; the man was quoted to retort that he wouldn’t have lived because that car would have to leave with either the palm or the seller himself for the jalang(o) sacrifice…thank you
Bajaw, you have let the cat out of the bag, you are Touray “Mandi Kat” not “Manding Mori” (laughs). “Jalangs” were things for the Sanyangs but now the Tourays have pushed us aside. LOL!!
Not at all Jack & Buba; Touray as the Karaamo (scholarly teacher) have never been a Dolobata konkon naalu; it’s the Sanyang, Sonko, Sanneh & Manneh who were on records & later were adopted as our taalibehs…
God knows; I supervised a team including some very sturbon Muslim boys who went to let their hair down at end of a long tedious days work, while I unsuccessfully tried to persuade & discourage them in futility initially before not to go…
Then they were back shortly, in sober mood & unhappy; one remarked to me, ‘he’s an idol worshipper’, I replied who enquiringly but my mind when to the evil kanilai devil straight away before I know; & then they released the news…
Buba there’s a Sanyang kunda man in town whom I met on first occasion & deliberately asked him what he had in hand (when both of us can clearly see it’s alcohol) he beamed, then came the honest answer in reply back; ‘Saafarah, saafara laa’¡¡¡ (Holy spiritual water-Wollof) he replied to me….