Creating solar communities as a way of mitigating Zambia's power (Energy) crisis

Summary form only given. Zambia Electricity Supply Corporation (ZESCO), which normally produces around 1950MW of power from its hydro power stations based mainly along the Zambezi and Kafue rivers, is the main power supplier in Zambia. This year the company has failed to generate enough power to meet the Zambian demand because of poor rainfall in the 2014/2015 rain season. It currently produces around 1200 MW. This has resulted in the company resorting to extensive load shedding of up to 12 hours in some areas to prevent total collapse of the power system. The impact of this is that, small to large scale businesses have reduced their production, a situation which has culminated into economic hardships. This paper endeavors to present a way to mitigate this problem. It advocates demand side renewable power generation using solar modules at domestic level to carter for the household loads. It also emphasizes that small scale farmers rearing chicken and watering crops using electrical power should adopt use of solar modules for these activities. This will help free the already constrained national utility grid. With high penetration of household and small scale farm photo-voltaic(PV) systems, it is possible to even reinforce the utility grid. During the day when the PV system produces power in excess of load requirements, the households and the small scale farmers can then fed power to the utility grid at a fee. It also proposes that in future, all new households should have a certain power generation capability before being connected to the national grid. This should be made law. This will help reduce the power deficit in future.