Considerations for the Planning of UHVDC Schemes in Southern Africa

This paper describes a simple approach to the planning of long distance electric power transmission systems for Southern African conditions. In common with China and India, significant sources of hydroelectric generation in Southern Africa are situated far form the main load centres. This applies particularly to the single site large hydroelectric resource of 44GW at Inga on the Congo River in the Democratic Republic of Congo and to the more than 100GW distributed sources across Central, West and East Africa. In all cases, the nearest major load centres are about 3000 to 6000 km away. The salient question is how to reliably and securely transport high power levels of up to 6 GW over this distance. This paper describes the results of the preliminary investigations into developing the transmission master plan for the Western Power Corridor project in Southern Africa.