Really thrilled to see my country (Nigeria) proposing a sub-Saharan electrical grid…when the mofos in charge can’t even supply stable electricity in their country yet.
This project will not succeed due to corruption and incompetence…you can trust Africans on that.
Wait. Those aren’t as mutually exclusive as you make it out to be.
Bigger grids are more resilient than smaller ones, not the other way around. California and Texas have fairly isolated grids for roughly the same amount of people. Compared to the Midwest or the Northeast or Southeast, larger population areas, their grids fare far worse despite having on average better weather.
Nigeria has 200 million people, which is an order of magnitude larger than Texas. I don’t think serving a slightly bigger population is going to help their situation.
More people, but significantly less users, and less intensive users. People in nigeria largely aren't charging electric cars, running laundry dryers, or have much industry that requires as much electricity as the industry in california and texas. In fact, I would guess that the electrical power consumption in Nigeria would be far less than either state, and the overall number of people wouldn't be as big of an impact. Any major infrastructure investments now would pay huge dividends to the people in the future. You don't plant trees because you need shade today, you plant trees because you need shade in 20 years, and that's what I think the goal is here, to prepare africa for a major technological and per capita consumption leap in the next two decades. If they start building today, with many partner countries, it'll prepare the region to succeed better.
The Southwest region is certainly geographically isolated; however California is doing its best to fight that with connections such as with the PNW, but those are long distance and California is still susceptible to power outages from a few weak links .
“California currently has 18,170MW (18.2 GW) of interconnections to neighboring states in the Western Interconnection, equivalent to approximately one-third of its annual peak electricity demand.“
In my view, 33% of annual peak is not weakly interconnected. Granted that number is from 2003.
I work on hydro electric plant control systems not transmission planning so I can’t say what industry insiders would call weakly interconnected, but on the systems I have worked on one or two ties is weakly interconnected and dozens is not.
Bigger grids might be more resilient, but that doesn't really help all that much when dealing with sabotage like in South Africa. When you have people deliberately destroying infrastructure to get contracts for fixing it, it becomes difficult.
China is involved; it's a "do ut des" scenario in which China gets resources and Africa gets low cost energy. That's the reason I'm sure it will work, and it's one of the chances the West royally missed there. Now it's all up to China, Russia and possibly Turkey.
For those interested, this is Latin for "I give, so that you may give [presumably in the future]".
More on topic, for the project to succeed the Chinese would need to be left in charge of operating the grid, which is likely to run into political difficulties. Building it isn't enough.
> For those interested, this is Latin for "I give, so that you may give [presumably in the future]".
Yes, apologies for not specifying it. About the topic, I guess that the chances to obtain cheap energy, which would be vital for further industrial development in the areas involved, could convince local leaders to not mess with the projects, also with the perspective of cashing in public political support when time comes.
> I guess that the chances to obtain cheap energy, which would be vital for further industrial development in the areas involved, could convince local leaders to not mess with the projects, also with the perspective of cashing in public political support when time comes.
That approach hasn't worked out for other African infrastructure, including already existing infrastructure. And one of the biggest ways to build political support is to promise to confiscate what non-Africans have. "Expropriation without compensation" is a major political slogan in South Africa. Things are similar elsewhere.
Won't work because Sub-Saharan Africans hate each other with a passion. Plus it's Nigeria proposing it, which means everybody will see it as just another effort of Nigeria to boss around. Plus it's Africa, so corruption is the law.
> The system also showed costs ranging from approximately a half-trillion dollars to just under 3 trillion.
Holy shit. A 5 second check of Google for GDP shows that the combined GDP of the top 10 countries in Africa is ~2.5 Trilion (If my tipsy brain isn't completely screwing up basic addition)
How the hell would they fund this? Would even China be crazy enough to fund this project?
It's a nice idea in theory but won't they just funnel the money to their families and such, instead of making things operate well? I heard that's been a big problem in South Africa for example.
Yeah, that's why they need china to not only finance, but also manage and implement as well. I imagine the chinese would only agree under terms like that.
China will dump a bunch of money into this. The project wont be completed because of corruption. The original leaders responsible for signing the deal will disappear to live in their mansions. The countries will still owe China and one day it will collect in a big way, at the end of a gun called forced economic collapse. China is going to own Africa.
I keep hearing that trope that evil China is going to rip poor Africa to shreds, but not really seeing it so far? they have been building railroads and mines, and haven't even dropped a single bomb so far... unlike those who tell us how truly evil China's plans are.
No it's starting to get resolved, see recent Zambia debt restructure. The TLDR is western propaganda who owns majority of African debt wants to push PRC debt trap narrative to pressure PRC to take haircut losses while they don't. PRC said lol no, and after 2 years, traditional (i.e. IMF) and private lenders, most from west, finally agreed to debt restructuring on their end to.
It’s called debt-trap diplomacy. China already forced Tajikistan to cede territory as part of a debt forgiveness deal. I believe they took over a port in Sri Lanka as well.
Off the top of my head there's the "Cultural Revolution", Tiananmen Square, the annexation of Tibet, and of course the ongoing genocide of the Uyghurs.
The Western powers have done a lot of fucked up things, but that doesn't make China the good guys.
Tajikstan borders China, so they were already vulnerable to Chinese territorial claims and military action.
However, this isn't the case in Africa. If some African country (esp. an inland one) decides to default on loans to China, what's China going to do? China has almost no ability to project power on a faraway continent. Of course, China could cut off trade, but just how reliant on trade with China are African nations?
I assume that the worldwide banking system is not divided into "good creditors" and "bad creditors", it has all shades of grey. So that anyone who bucks the system is to be made into an example.
Tajikstan ceded ~1300 sqkm to PRC a decade ago to settle border ratification deal from 2000s in which PRC ceded 28000 sqkm to Tajikstan. Some retarded western propaganda tried to tie this to a few billions of Tajik debt to PRC when the dispute settlement was made 10+ years before BRI was a thing.
>It's called debt-trap diplomacy
It's called Indian propaganda co-opted by west. Just like the Tajikstan claims. Poster child being Hambantota port which was India being butthurt after getting first dibs from Sri Lanka to develop port, but couldn't. Sri Lanka went to PRC after Canadian feasibility study, but the port was poorly run, hence selling 85% stake/99yr lease to China Merchant Ports in exchange for USD to service Sri Lanka's western debts that more qualifies as debt trap (~80% of foreign debt vs PRC ~10%), and seeing massive improvement in management and profitability.
What is the benefit of having a huge grid vs spending the same money on many local renewable power plants with smaller local grids? I get that if the wind or sun is generating power in one part but not another but that can be overcome by having several local sources of power.
Sub-Saharan Africa isn't really known for its abundance of spare power plants. Connecting grids is an easy way to make the overall system more robust. It also makes future projects to increase energy production capacity less economically risky, and international cooperation can be geopolitically stabilizing. There's a reason that North America and Europe built continent-scale power grids.
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[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 104 ms ] threadThis project will not succeed due to corruption and incompetence…you can trust Africans on that.
Bigger grids are more resilient than smaller ones, not the other way around. California and Texas have fairly isolated grids for roughly the same amount of people. Compared to the Midwest or the Northeast or Southeast, larger population areas, their grids fare far worse despite having on average better weather.
In my view, 33% of annual peak is not weakly interconnected. Granted that number is from 2003.
I work on hydro electric plant control systems not transmission planning so I can’t say what industry insiders would call weakly interconnected, but on the systems I have worked on one or two ties is weakly interconnected and dozens is not.
https://www.electricpowergroup.com/Downloads/pFinalCAElecGen...
For those interested, this is Latin for "I give, so that you may give [presumably in the future]".
More on topic, for the project to succeed the Chinese would need to be left in charge of operating the grid, which is likely to run into political difficulties. Building it isn't enough.
Yes, apologies for not specifying it. About the topic, I guess that the chances to obtain cheap energy, which would be vital for further industrial development in the areas involved, could convince local leaders to not mess with the projects, also with the perspective of cashing in public political support when time comes.
That approach hasn't worked out for other African infrastructure, including already existing infrastructure. And one of the biggest ways to build political support is to promise to confiscate what non-Africans have. "Expropriation without compensation" is a major political slogan in South Africa. Things are similar elsewhere.
This seems to be a tech analysis. Hmm, technically feasible.
Holy shit. A 5 second check of Google for GDP shows that the combined GDP of the top 10 countries in Africa is ~2.5 Trilion (If my tipsy brain isn't completely screwing up basic addition)
How the hell would they fund this? Would even China be crazy enough to fund this project?
https://apnews.com/article/china-debt-banking-loans-financia...
Shell will massacre villages that resist exploitation, how many massacres have the Chinese financed so far?
The Western powers have done a lot of fucked up things, but that doesn't make China the good guys.
However, this isn't the case in Africa. If some African country (esp. an inland one) decides to default on loans to China, what's China going to do? China has almost no ability to project power on a faraway continent. Of course, China could cut off trade, but just how reliant on trade with China are African nations?
No. What gave you that crazy idea? The banking system is dominated by western nations; why would they care about backing up China's claims?
Tajikstan ceded ~1300 sqkm to PRC a decade ago to settle border ratification deal from 2000s in which PRC ceded 28000 sqkm to Tajikstan. Some retarded western propaganda tried to tie this to a few billions of Tajik debt to PRC when the dispute settlement was made 10+ years before BRI was a thing.
>It's called debt-trap diplomacy
It's called Indian propaganda co-opted by west. Just like the Tajikstan claims. Poster child being Hambantota port which was India being butthurt after getting first dibs from Sri Lanka to develop port, but couldn't. Sri Lanka went to PRC after Canadian feasibility study, but the port was poorly run, hence selling 85% stake/99yr lease to China Merchant Ports in exchange for USD to service Sri Lanka's western debts that more qualifies as debt trap (~80% of foreign debt vs PRC ~10%), and seeing massive improvement in management and profitability.
South Sudan is a full UN member, recognized as an independent country since 2011.
The map shows lines running through their territory, but as if it's still part of Sudan.