The new power sector planning

Abstract

Many who are today operating at the decisionmaking level, eg politicians, boards of directors, claim that the ‘track record’ of the present form of long-term power sector planning could not be described as good, virtually anywhere in the world. Many of these, together with others who are connected in any way with investing in the vast sums of money apparently needed in the electricity supply sector, are now tending to stand aside and to wonder whether there is not a more effective way of proceeding, confronted as the sector is almost everywhere with so many cases of: generation over-planting; the wrong generation plant-mix; the over- then under-shooting of financial targets; and poor consumer reaction to the prices charged, especially with respect to large commercial or industrial electricity supplies. That practical, and possibly better, substitutes for present long-term power sector planning exist has been claimed in some quarters from the earliest times of electricity supply, especially amongst entrepreneurs. Now is the time to bring things to a head in a full discussion of the subject, given the amount of investment and operating money, often in scarce foreign exchange, which is taken for granted as being needed in electricity supply for the future.