By Maura Kak
Staff Writer

The sharing of electricity between nations is a key step toward their economic development and political stability.

In southern Africa, a Purdue research group is helping to develop efficient electricity networks to reduce costs and increase the availability of electrical power in the region.

The research is being conducted by Purdue's State Utility Forecasting Group, a research branch of the interdisciplinary engineering department and is headed by Frederick Sparrow, a professor of industrial engineering and economics.

The State Utility Forecasting Group was created in 1985 for the purpose of forecasting electricity demands in Indiana. Through the incentive of Sparrow and Will Masters, associate professor of agricultural economics, the group began a collaboration with the Southern Africa Power Pool in 1996 for the purpose of minimizing the cost of power generation and increasing the efficiency of electricity networks in 12 countries of Southern Africa.

These goals are achieved through the application of models which incorporate such factors as geography, population distribution and economic growth.

The project incorporates various sources of power such as nuclear, hydro, coal and gas and makes predictions as to the optimal locations and types of future power stations. In addition, the group has sought to accommodate the limited computer resources of Africa, by designing the modeling program so that it may be run on a high-speed laptop.

The implementation of efficient networks which transmit power over the entire Southern Africa region, as opposed to the use of several local networks, is expected to drastically reduce the cost of providing power.

Dr. Brian Bowen, associate director of the project, said that in the short term, savings are expected to amount to $100 million per year. In the long term, the cost of electricity production may be reduced by a couple of billion dollars over the next 20 years. Other sources of cost reduction will stem from more efficient use of current facilities.

"Electric utilities are owned by the government, and that brings in a lot of inefficiencies," Bowen said. "With the introduction of private competition, they will become more efficient."

For example, in Zimbabwe, excess power is being consumed when electrical power is used to process fertilizer, in an inefficient method abandoned by many countries years ago.

One of the main difficulties in characterizing the electricity needs of a large, diverse region has been the collecting and processing of vast amounts of data.

"In the early days, we (collected data) through one committee, and three or four of the countries didn't have e-mail connections," Bowen said.

Despite these difficulties, Bowen said, "The model is already being used in South Africa; Zimbabwe and Zambia are installing it. We hope that Mozambique may be the next."