Modelling Energy Supply Options for Long-Term Electricity Generation - A Case Study of Ghana Power System

Abstract

Electricity continues to be a major contributor to the development of the economy of every country, Ghana not exempted. There is, therefore, growing interest to ensure that the supply of electricity meets the demand in all sectors of the Ghanaian economy. The economic costs and environmental issues underpinning electricity is, however, a huge bottleneck to the aspirations of Ghana as a country. The study seeks to explore a long-term (2018 to 2048) comprehensive energy supply strategy to meet the future electricity demand in a sustainable manner while maintaining a low carbon environment. The study employed the development of scenarios, Business As Usual (BAU), and High Economic Growth (HEG) and an empirical methodology that aided the setup of the optimized objective function for the electricity supply model under a set of constraints that define the feasible region containing all possible solutions of the problem. The results indicate that thermal power plants dominated Ghana’s installed capacity. Hydropower plants put together, however, dominated in the electricity generation mix in Ghana during the study period. The introduction of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) of 15% and 30% emission reduction targets, showed that hydro and renewables such as wind will make an outstanding increase in electricity generation from 2021 to 2047. The least-cost modelling results concluded that meeting final electricity demands without consideration for environmental impact concerns are the cheapest. Hence, a 30% emission reduction target requires the highest investment for electricity generation throughout the modelling period. The study recommends that research studies such as this be encouraged for effective energy planning since energy planning studies are limited in the country.