Hydropower potential essessment and modelling of Grid interconnection for the North-Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Abstract

North Kivu is one of the twenty-six provinces of DRC, and it is composed of six territories. Among these territories, only a small part of Nyiragongo territory and Goma town are connected to the Eastern National Grid (SNEL). Others are still living without electricity despite the abundant hydropower potential available in the province which remains unexploited. Previous studies have identified rivers with potential hydropower potential in the province, but no technical study is done on how this potential can be integrated and exploited in a way that the Government and investors get sufficient concrete information and interest in developing the resource for the benefit of the population, who are mainly still living in dark. Besides, the electricity demand of the province was still not well known, which would help to evaluate at which rate the hydropower potential can contribute to covering the regional electricity demand. This thesis aims to assess all hydropower potential from existing hydrological data and see at which rate it can contribute to the electricity supply in the province and design a Grid-connected system for major hydropower plants. The Atlas of renewable energy of DRC estimated a total of 359.07𝑀𝑊 of hydropower potential in the province. Based on 2020 data and empirical analysis, the actual electricity demand of the province has been estimated at around 831.4𝑀𝑊. It was found that this actual demand can be covered at 43.2% by the total hydropower potential. Moreover, this study proposes a Grid-connected system for the province, where a total of 11 small and medium hydropower plants have been interconnected for higher power reliability and security of the local electricity supply. The pre-feasibility study of the proposed system was studied in RETSCreen Expert software. The economic indices such as a PBP of 4.05 years, an IRR of 28.74 %, a BCR of 4.08% and a LCOE of 0.08 USD/kWh proved that the proposed system was economically feasible. A Simulink model of the proposed system was simulated to verify how power is being shared between different buses. It has been found that a total of 5.99MW out of a total generated of 250.15MW were lost in the network. From there, the conclusion and recommendations for the improvement of the proposed system before its implementation have been formulated.