Renewable energy development in the Namibian context

This paper reports on an overview of the current electricity situation in Namibia that renders it necessary for capacity expansion of electricity generation in order to meet the country´s abounding electricity needs. A discussion of the efforts made by the Namibian national power utility, NamPower and the country´s government will be presented in the paper, followed by an abbreviated review of on-going wind energy projects in the country. A study that was jointly conducted in 1999 by the Ministry of Mines and Energy (MME) and Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) GmbH has revealed that Namibia has highly favorable wind regimes that would make the adoption of wind energy a feasible development. It is therefore on the basis of these findings that Namibia, through its national power utility, NamPower, has undertaken to exploit the forecasted wind regimes for energy generation to be fed into the existing national grid. There are on-going wind projects that seek to put up wind farms along the south coast of Namibia, mainly in Luderitz. Direct-driven synchronous wind generator (DDSG) technology is commonly gaining applications due its favorable operational features. Therefore, a discussion on this type of wind generator technology and other important aspects regarding grid integration of wind energy will be covered in order to allow for proactive planning and implementation of the proposed wind farms for grid integration in Namibia.