Mini hydropower for increasing access to energy in Tanzania

The UN Millennium Development Goal of eradicating extreme poverty will not be achieved unless substantial progress is made on improving energy access. To meet the goal by 2015, an additional 395 million people need to be provided with electricity and 1 billion with access to clean cooking facilities. Access to modern forms of energy is strictly related to income levels because allows lighting, mechanical power, transport and telecommunication services, besides it's essential for the provision of clean water, sanitation, health care and indoor cooking. Tanzania, located in the East Africa, well represents this 'lack of energy' situation. Due to its tropical climate, rivers and lakes abundance, Tanzania has the largest hydropower potential in East African Community with about 5 GW, of which only about 10% are tapped. Potential small scale hydropower sites are situated in remote isolated areas and their development is expected to serve as an engine towards economical and social development of the remote communities which are currently supplied by isolated diesel powered stations. The government underscores the advantages of investing in hydro electricity generation only for those sites which have been evaluated and proved to be viable. The tanzanian 'Dar Es Salaam Institute of Technology' is working on undertaking pre-feasability studies on a number of rivers in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania, but they are still improving their building capacity, requesting the cooperation of 'Politecnico di Milano' to achieve it. To enable potential developers to quick take-o and build the earmarked sites, a model for mini hydropower plant sizing has been developed in the form of the software Mini hydro plants simulator, based on Microsoft excel 2007 ®. The software makes use of some input data, obtainable by a single survey on the desired location, to generate an optimization of the installed electrical power, that best ts the features of both the river and the connected utilities, and an exhaustive economic analysis of the investment. The di culty in obtaining components costs from worldwide and local suppliers, and the lack of detailed hydrological data for the rivers in analisys, have been the hardest tasks. During the time spent in Tanzania the model has grown taking information from the local contest and nally has been tested upon the Madunda power plant, a mini hydro installation recently built by the italian NGO ACRA. Moreover the software has been built attempting to make it as user friendly as possible. It is hoped that these tools can lead to increase hydropower production in the country and at the same time improve rural areas access to electricity, involving in the project the DIT, sponsoring societies and tanzanian government.