Two recently announced projects aim to upgrade Tunisia’s electricity grid and improve power integration between Europe and Maghreb nations.
According to International Monetary Fund figures, Tunisia’s economy has doubled in size over the past decade, from some $20.1 billion (at current prices) in 1998 to $40.7 billion last year. This increase — much of it prompted by Tunisia’s growing integration with Europe — has placed a significant strain on the nation’s energy infrastructure.
To meet the growing needs of industry, tourism and individual consumers, the African Development Bank (AfDB) last month agreed to a $67 million loan to rehabilitate and restructure the national grid. The bank said current demand growth of five percent each year has led to network “saturation.” This has caused overloads, losses and high-voltage drops “sometimes in excess of 20 percent” — twice the Tunisian Electricity and Gas Network’s (STEG) contractual limit of 10 percent for the low-voltage network, and almost three-times that of the 7 percent limit for the medium-voltage network.
Tunisia’s expanding ties with the European economy has also led to the announcement of a plan to integrate its national grid with Italy’s. The $3 billion project, a joint-venture between STEG and Italy’s electricity transportation company, will see a 200 kilometer long, 1,000 megawatt high-voltage direct current (HVDC) submarine cable link the two Mediterranean nations, via El Hawaria in Tunisia and Partanna in Sicily. A 1,200 megawatt plant will be built in Tunisia as part of the deal, which will provide the country with 400 megawatts of energy, with the rest transmitted through the cable to Italy. The cable flow will also be bidirectional, connecting Tunisia’s grid with the rest of Western Europe’s.
The plan to connect the two countries falls under a wider Euro-Med strategy to integrate the electricity and energy networks of Europe with that of the oil and gas-rich Maghreb countries. Due to its proximity to Algeria and Tunisia, Italy is proving to be the natural linchpin of this strategy, with the existing Transmed gas pipeline linking it to Algeria due to be augmented by the Galsi pipeline next year. When pipelines to Spain are added to the equation, gas capacity between Algeria and Europe will rise to 62 billion cubic meters per year over the next five years.
With supplies of Russian gas proving unreliable due to political squabbling with the Ukraine, it makes sense for Europe to increase its supply of Algerian gas. In regard to off-shoring generation capacity, the Tunisian project may well prove to be a sign of things to come. The $588 billion Desertec project, formally launched in July by a consortium of European and North African companies, foresees using North Africa’s deserts to power Europe’s economies. The scheme, originally a Club of Rome white paper sponsored by Jordan’s Prince Hassan bin Talal, proposes to use concentrated solar plants in the Sahara to produce electricity which is then channeled to Europe via HVDC submarine cables.
Industry figures and energy analysts are currently divided as to whether Desertec offers a viable long-term, low-impact solution to Europe’s energy needs. To begin with, it is estimated that up to 20 HVDC cables will be required, each costing around the same as that of the proposed Tunisia-Italy cable. Furthermore, there is a significant cost element associated with the construction of such cables in terms of the infrastructure required at either end to convert the flow from alternating current to direct current and back again (DC suffers lower degradation over long distances than AC). Given such cost concerns, the Tunisian government will no doubt hope that the expertise it will gain from the El Hawaria project will give it a competitive advantage to host more such cables if, though more likely when, they are required.
Sam Inglis is Executive’s Istanbul-based correspondent
