Electricity production from sugar industries in Africa : a case of South Africa

• Main Author: Banda, Azel
• Other Authors: Davidson, Ogunlade R
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2014
• Subjects: Energy and Development Studies
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/6983

Bibliography: leaves 65-70. === Low access to electricity is a problem in Africa. Apart from South Africa and Mauritius access to electricity generally falls below 30% of the population. The situation is even worse in the rural areas which housed about 70% or more of the population and whose access to modern energy services in these areas is between 5%-10%. Hence, this work aims at providing means of increasing access to electricity for the larger portion of the continent. This work looked at the potential of using bagasse, a waste from sugar production, to produce electricity beyond the sugar factory to the national grid. It shows that bagasse generated electricity can contribute to increasing this access in Africa as a whole by as much as 9.4 TWh, using Condensing Extraction Steam Turbines. However, this increase varies among countries with the highest being Swaziland, 67%, and the lowest South Africa, 1.5%, due to the current capacity. The actualization of this technical potential, however, can only come about with proper application of relevant policies and measures that need to be in place for Africa in general and South Africa in particular as more detailed work was done on the latter. Due to limitation in scope, this work did not cover the social, financial and agronomic aspects and neither was optimization of sugar considered in evaluating electricity from bagasse.