Evaluating electricity generation expansion planning in Ghana

Ghana, a West African nation of 28 million people, provides an interesting case study on the interaction between power supply and politics in emerging economies. From 2012-2016, due to security of supply issues around hydro and fuel supplies, Ghana experienced the worst power crisis in its history with regular rolling blackouts. Rural and low-income urban areas and businesses were especially affected, and public discontent was palpable. The government's response was a reactive approach to generation expansion planning, focused on increasing supply. Power generation was opened up to the private sector and emergency power plants were procured. 93 percent of capacity installed during this post-crisis period was thermal generation, which increased dependence on natural gas and crude oil. Overall, this power crisis highlighted the cost of overlooking reliability and an undiversified generation mix.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Gadzanku, Sika.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Jennifer Morris and Karen Tapia-Ahumada.

• Institute for Data, Systems, and Society.
• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/122096

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/122096