Developing Interconnectivity, Maximizing resource sharing within E.Africa

Last Updated 14 years ago by Kenya Engineer

Tanzania will be hosting the 14th annual East African Power Industry Conservation (EAPIC) from the 10th of September to 13th this year at the Serena Hotel, Dar es Salaam. The conference brings together the region’s power sector players, international consultants and experts, project developers and investors and the financial community.

The East African region is considered to have abundant untapped natural resources but only a small fraction of this potential has been developed. The conference is thus aimed at developing interconnectivity and maximizing resource sharing based on the resources that each country has been endowed with.

The gap analysis for each East African country is common knowledge but due to lack of long term planning to meet the spiraling demand, the frustrating and extremely expensive use of emergency power is proving to be cost ineffective. This in turn is pushing the region to search for viable, sustainable and more efficient alternative sources of power generation for the long term future of the East African power sector.

Tanzania recently discovered new natural gas fields off the Lindi coast.This is expected to significantly boost the country’s gas to power potential, helping to reduce its dependency on hydro-power which has caused such chronic power shortages and outages in the past few years. The well, discovered by Norwegian firm Statoil and US firm Exxon Mobil, contains an estimated 3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is said can be used to generate power for cars and homes.

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