The fact on Ashegoda Wind Park investment

Abstract

Since year 2006 the government is running another energy project of Ashegoda Wind Park and Mesobo-Harena (40-60MW each one) for Tigray development by doing wrong site selection and taking a loan from foreign bank on behalf Ethiopian project. As per consulted references there was no enough time to make the required study before the implementation bides and based on this fact there was few interests on this project by well known international wind companies. As per reference 12 of this post, finally on this year, the French Loan of 208.6 million Euros from a French financier was obtained to implement the project. This proyect is about a loan of 210 M Euros to Ethiopian future generation including my recently born kids.
Hence the objective of this post is to give more technical detail so that the corruption side of the project become at the public eye. On this regard details, I searched more specific reference from UN, GTZ[1] and I have resumed it so that average people with basic technical knowledge can identify where reside the wrong side of this wind energy project

Introduction about Tigray regions development and support

We Ethiopians, including a citizen with least education, know that the one ethnic (Tigrean) based Meles Zenawei regimen has the objective of creating the “Greatest Republic of Tigray” with an open anti-Ethiopian program. Like the history of colonialism or neocolonialism, the main resource of Tigray development comes from the rest of the country some times by political technique and some other time by open military based forces. Some examples of these techniques are:
1) Generate confusion on Ethiopians and the international community by creating tension amongst different Ethiopian nations and nationalities so that these nations and nationalities do not get time to think about common Ethiopia’s interest and how to struggle the Tigrean hidden interest. Examples of these techniques are evil policy of divide-and-rule that produces conflicts in between Ethiopian nationalities. Conflict in Ambo, Wolisso, Nagale Borena, Somalia, Benishangule … etc
2) Cover the election as fair and free by wrongly interpreting the voice of rural people. When they could not lie any more they started using military, police and security forces in the previous national election 2005.Meles use his party TPLF by giving Ethiopian concern though the creation of EPRDF. The main concern is not Ethiopian development; their concerns are ensuring Tigray’s superiority and turn the region into a super power of the Horn of Africa.

Now after 18 years, they have developed Tigray region at an alarming pace in sharp contrast to the rest of the country. In many ways they are achieving their goals. Now, Tigray has become the center of huge industries:
1) Engineering plants like Takaze hydroelectric power plant and Ashegoda wind power park,
2) Water wall drill and dam construction for irrigation projects and rural area water supply
3) Road construction to connect Tigray with Sudan and International airport better on many ways than any others richer regions or comparable with Addis Ababa airport. All these are to ensure Tigrean infrastructure independency in a region with no economical contribution to the nation.
4) Industry like Drug manufacturing plant, Mosob Cement Factory and Textile factory, Complex mechanical engineering plant (Mesfin Engineering),
5) In the business area commercial banks and insurance companies are so many in quantity and qualities.
6) In education so huge Universities in Makele and others zones technical school are running or being constructed. A lot of money has been invested in recruiting staff and building laboratories. Most USA based scholarships are offered by the Meles´s government to Mekele University staffs.

It is well known among Ethiopians that currently the Ethiopian economies are controlled by two owners:
1) Mohammed Al Amoudi super monopoly, he is born in Ethiopia but now a Saudi citizen and the 77th world richest person control the most of Ethiopian economy through his company known as MIDROC Ethiopia
2) Tigrean based and federal government (that is Meles aided companies) business Empire. At the top of all these are:
i) EFFORT (Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray),
ii) TDA (Tigrai Development Agency) and
iii) REST (Relief Sociaty of Tigrai),
iV) TRG (Tigrai Regional Government). More detail at http://www.abbaymedia.com/TPLF_Companies.htm ,http://abbaymedia.com/News/?p=2683 Reading to the media about these topics and comparing what I had seen in Ethiopia it is clear that the corruption in the government is getting bigger and bigger concern.

Transparency International defines corruption as “the misuse of entrusted power for private gain” This is misuse of national resource for gain in a single region. Among many things one of the negative sides of the ethnics based politics is the easiest way to shift the national resource to the territory where the leading politicians’ ethnics groups are born.

Unfair site selection for wind park investment

As per the state government of USA publication [7], transparency international has a record about corruption in all countries. In case of Ethiopia, the picture show to ethiopia in the list of hoter or corrupted countries.

On the above map, the hotter the color, the more corrupt the country organized as per this map scale 1 the most corrupt and greater number is the least corrupted country.

For me, when I make the energy sector analysis I become very sick because it is unbelievable theft that my 3 and 6 years old kids and Ethiopian citizens will pay the money never used by their families but they pay a loan used unfairly.

As it is pointed above this project is 120MW of power source that cost a loan of 210 M Euros [2]. This is another project elected without good study of natural resource and ignoring the best site that are available in Oromia region, more specifically in Naziret and other places of rift valley site.
The elected wind parks are situated in the northern Ethiopian highland at an altitude of 2400 m above ground level [3] & [4]. Since we have enough reference of information we can evaluate and be convinced that this wind-park investment is a good evidence of the unfair resource allocation into Tigray even when projects are not feasible and they claim for unfair use of national budget. At the begging of the conflicts I had only the document published by GTZ and few documents on the Internet by Addis Ababa University but today I have more documents issued by UN section called SWERA[2] who did satellite based study of Wind and solar energy resource for 13 developing countries. Among these Ethiopia is one of them. [5] & [6]
If you observe the GTZ documents [3] and [4] you can see the following

1. On page 5 of that document, under section 1.3 about “Wind Resource Assessment” it is clearly indicated that the site resource study was conducted in less than one year. The first anemometer station was erected in January 2005, the second one in mid-September 2005. The report was given in August 2006. Since wind resource follow the probabilistic nature, during a given period of future time we can’t surely know if the wind become available or not. The current practices just measure wind data on site, compile long term data and calculate the probability of the occurrence of wind on the future date. THIS LONG TERM STUDY IS NOT DONE IN ASHEGODA. Reliable wind park investments require site study of more than three years to insure the continuity of production, recovery of the investments and get profit within 20 year of investment life.

2. As stated on page 14 under some barrier of the project, you can read and understand “…the extreme time pressure from the Ethiopian Authorities … for project construction (twelve months) in 2007. It is known that the site has no road and others infrastructure to transport chosen type of wind turbine. Also the electric connection 230kV transportation line needs implementation. WHY THE GOVERNMENT WAS SO URGENT TO IMPLEMNENT THIS HUGE PROJECT WITHIN A YEAR?

Now the project is planned for 36 months which should be as a result of the pressure from the French government side.

3. On page 5 under section 1,2 about “Site description Ashegoda” you can see that this site is located 2400m above the sea level. At this level the air density is low, which is directly proportional to the energy production. Even so the wind speed is greater from some other places; just looking the air density they have to evaluate the energy production through out the park life time (generally 20 years). Therefore, before constructing, the production plant should be studied the energy production by numbers of simulation software or they have to install pilot plant, which is not done in Tigray at first attempt to implement the project in year 2006.

4. As stated on page 14 of the mentioned GTZ document, the are a list of barriers among these the following is The Energy production assessment was conducted by using the technology of GAMESA G58 (Spanish company) and VESTAS V52 (Danish company) and ENERCON E53 (Germany company). When the bid was published in year 2007, “several manufacturers have been requested for an Expression of Interest (EoI) by the consultant, except the ENERCON-India, others two more capable companies were unwilling to participate in the bid because of pending or need for clarification on the project.

5. Also I am surprised with one official of Wayane government when he accepted the better wind power availability at Naziret Area [9] but he tried to convince people by saying that THE TOP MANAGEMENT DECIDED BY THE ASHEGODA WIND PARK BECAUSE IN NAZIRET THERE IS COMMUNICATION ANTENNA. It is too absurd answer because today for every problem there are many technical solutions. It is known that Naziret is located in area with best infrastructure development then Ashegoda. They know that if they visit Europe they can see in many places the closeness-location of wind turbines and communication antennas.

6. This park is known as “the African biggest Wind Park” [10], [11]. It may be bigger but the questions are:

a. Is the investment site fair?
b. Is the wind farm project more typical application for land-locked equator area countries like Ethiopia or is it compared with photovoltaic power plant, which is typical energy project for country located near to equator area (e.g. Ethiopia). This is having the intension of no mentioning our good potential in numbers of hydroelectric power source due to diversification of electric energy source.
If you see other recent document published in 2007 by SWERA [5], the Tigray wind resource power is less compared to many other regions of Oromia, SNNPR and Harer.
On this study if we observe page 3.4 of the document we can see the following table.
As per the map, table 1 & 2 classification of wind resource and extent of associated land area the following table indicate regional distribution of wind resources under various wind categories.






As shown on the tables given above, the majority of land area with Excellent wind resource region falls in Oromia followed by SNNPR and Harar. Observe on the table and on the GIS graph that wind resource potential of Class 7 category is found only in Oromia. Wind resources of class 6 are better in Oromia, Harar and in SNNPR than the Tigray site. Wind resources of class 5 are better in Oromia and in SNNPR than the Tigray site. So, if major concern of the Government is investing where profit should be maximized by lowering initial investment and looking better site for maximum energy production, it is clear that only corruption can deviate the best project to worst and unprofitable investment.

Conclusion

1) This document indicates some distinctive characteristic of Meles regimen on being eager to invest more in Tigray and miss use of Ethiopian resource. As result, they could work persistently and finally get a loan from French government after three years of search of loan worldwide. It was planned to complete the project within the year of 2007 but after long way of persistent work they have got the loan. Now, the project may operate on what-ever condition but it is not the best project that Ethiopian future generation will pay the loan taken for unfairness of it.

2) Recent and reliable study of SWERA [5] show that better wind energy resource of class 7 (the best wind energy resource) exist only in Oromo region and still classes 6 and 5 are more abundant in Oromia, SNNPR and Harar but it is unclear why the government have chosen the region of Tigray just based on his political decision making power.


3) As per reference [3] and [4] the capacity of the projects is 120MW integrated by two sites where one of these sites (Mesobo-harena wind park site) is still not published except in [4]. Each one is approximately 40-60 MW. The aim of this secrecy is to simulate and convince the public as huge capacity of wind energy resource at Tigray region compared to others regions.

4) As per GTZ document, the Ashegoda Wind Park was planned to put in construction starting from year 2006 within 12 months of project life but due to unwillingness of many wind-park-companies to participate on the Expression of interest (EOI) in the bid. The unwillingness of fames wind-park companies is clear evidence of un-matured and/or unfair of this project in 2006 when the EOI was published.

5) This document indicates some distinctive characteristic of Meles regimen on being eager to invest more in Tigray. As result, they could work persistently and finally get a loan from French government after three years of search of loan worldwide. It was planned to complete the project within the year of 2007 but after long way of persistent work they have got the loan.


6) Now, the project may operate on what-ever condition but it is not the best project that Ethiopian future generation will pay the loan taken for unfairness of it.


Reference
1) Geographic profile of the middle and east Africa, Chapter 8. p
2) Ethiopian Review website of Date May 8th, 2009
3) E en-feasibility-study-wind-park-ashegoda-2006n-feasibility-study-wind-park-ashegoda-2006 by GTZ
4) En-feasibility-study-wind-park-mesobo-harena-2006 by GTZ
5) Ethiopian Rural Energy Development and Promotion Center. Final Report. Country background information. Solar and Wind Energy Utilization and Project Development Scenarios October 2007
6) High resolution solar energy resource assessment Within the UNDP-project SWERA. World Renewable Energy Congress VII, Cologne, Germany, 29 June - 5 July, 2002
7) http://www.state.gov/e/eeb/ifd/2008/100861.htm
8) http://www.waterpowermagazine.com/story.asp?sectioncode=46&storyCode=2052913
9) Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation The wind energy projects in Ethiopia by Kebede Welalu, 2006
10) http://timbuktuchronicles.blogspot.com/2008/10/ethiopia-banks-on-wind-power.html
11) http://www.greenpacks.org/2008/10/20/largest-wind-farm-in-africa-to-be-built-in-ethiopia/
12) http://nazret.com/blog/index.php?title=ethiopia_eepco_secures_finance_for_wind_&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1
Foot notes
[1] GTZ is German Technical Cooperation equivalent to USA aid program. GTZ stand for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit), which operate on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ),
[2] One of the UN, more specifically, part of UNDP organizations called “Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment (SWERA)”, which is a decision support system that provides online high quality renewable energy resource information at no cost to the user for countries and regions around the world.