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Abstract
The Southern Africa Power Pool (SAPP) was formed by the Southern African Development Cooperating Countries to coordinate and cooperate in the operation of their power systems to minimize costs while maintaining reliability. The paper presents the overview of SAPP, its achievements, benefits and challenges that SAPP faces.
Key Words
SAPP, achievements, benefits, challenges, sustainability
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1. Introduction
1.1 Membership and Structure of SAPP
Southern Africa Power Pool (SAPP) comprises of 12 state-owned utilities of the following countries: Angola, Botswana, DR Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. SAPP was formed in 1995 with the primary objective to "coordinate and co-operate in the operation of their systems to minimize costs while maintaining reliability". The pool covers about 200 million people and 9 million square metres. The number of customers of the interconnected national systems is estimated at more than 4.1 million although this figure understates the number of retail customers because some of the customers are distribution companies. The SAPP does not use central dispatch but rely on long-term bilateral contracts for electricity supply between generators and customers. These contracts are supplemented by short-term contracts in the short-term energy market and other deals. Full membership of SAPP is limited to national utilities. Most of these utilities are still vertically integrated with a primary mandate of ensuring the autonomy and self-sufficiency of the domestic system.
The pool is organized under the executive committee, which acts as the Board of Directors and a management committee which overseas the administration of the pool. Three sub-committees serve under the direction of the management committee: the planning sub-committee which focuses on reviewing the wheeling rates annually and developing and indicative SAPP expansion plan every 2 years; the operating sub-committee and its associated coordinating centre; and the environmental sub-committee. The coordinating centre is responsible for tasks such as undertaking pool monitoring activities, carrying out operating and planning studies, determining transfer limits on tie-lines, administering regional data base, disseminating maintenance schedules, providing technical advice and seeking funding for its needs.
1.2 Operating Strategies
The operation of the pool is based on the pool pricing mechanism set out in 13 detailed schedules covering four broad areas of transactions: firm power contracts of varying...