THE RENEWABLE ENERGY IN LIBYA: PRESENT DIFFICULTIES AND REMEDIES

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1 THE RENEWABLE ENERGY IN LIBYA: PRESENT DIFFICULTIES AND REMEDIES Ali Asheibi, Ashraf Khalil Electrical and Electronic Engineering department Faculty of Engineering Benghazi University Benghazi-Libya Abstract Libya is the largest oil producer in North Africa. The oil and natural gas exportation contributes to the most of the Libyan economical revenue. Some industrial sectors in Libya essentially rely on this oil. One major sector is electricity generation which uses gas and fuel to operate the turbines in the generation stations. Libya currently produces energy of 33 GWH to meet the demand on the local electricity market. The demand on energy will substantially increase in the near future as a result of the economical development in order to build new infrastructure in Libya after the massive destruction that happened in the last 42 years. This will lead to more consumption of oil and gas which causes a reduction in the national economical revenue and more carbon dioxide emission. Therefore, Libya should use its alternative energy supplies to cover some of its load requirements. The location of Libya on the high centered radiation area as well as its long coastal line on the Mediterranean make it one of the countries that have very high potential for solar and wind energy. There are other available renewable sources in Libya such as geothermal, biomass and tidal waves, however, all these sources have less potential in Libya. In this paper analytical data for the current and future energy situations are presented. Challenges and obstacles faced by the renewable energy sector in Libya are briefly discussed and finally some recommendations for promoting the renewable energy in Libya are summarized. Keywords: Renewable Energy, Solar energy, Wind energy, Libya. 1. Introduction Although, the renewable energy has been used in Libya back to the seventies, the main applications are for powering small remote loads such as communication repeaters, rural electrifications, water pumping and Cathodic Protection for the oil pipelines in the desert. With the ever increasing demands on the energy, the renewable energy sector in Libya planned a number of projects in the last decade. The proposed projects are mainly solar energy and wind energy systems, which are the best alternative renewable energy alternatives in Libya. For example, the average solar radiation in Libya is around 7.5 kwh/m 2 /day with about 3000 to 3500 sunshine hours per year [1]. The average wind speed is roughly between 6 m/s and 7.5 m/s at 40 m height [2]. This huge amount of sunshine and wind distributed over an area of 1,750,000 km 2 can provide the future electricity needs for Libya and its neighbors and can even be delivered to Europe through High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) links. However is blessed with such a huge renewable energy resources, their share in electricity production is negligible. Libya currently relies entirely on the oil and natural gas for electricity production. These two conventional resources are limited and depleted. As the energy demands are increasing rapidly in Libya which can affect the oil and natural gas production. This can lead to decrease in the country revenue. This pushed the energy authority toward a rapid and not well planned investment in renewable energy. According to the REAOL the renewable energy share is expected to reach 10% of energy demand in 2025 [3]. The planned projects are mainly solar and wind energy systems. The development of this new technology faces many barriers. All the planned projects are financing by the General Electricity Company which is a state-owned company with no room to the privatization or competition. Due to the inconvenient planning some renewable energy projects are delayed or suspended. The lack of the metrological data makes the planning and the decision making a cumbersome task. Additionally, there are not any good surveys or detailed studies about the current energy situation and demands evolution in Libya. With the expected increased renewable share many problems could arise. For example the impact of the renewable energy

2 penetration on the Libyan grid which has not been studied yet. Because of the aforementioned reasons and the lack of the awareness and experience in the renewable energy technology, this new technology is still viewed suspicious. We can conclude that Libya suffers from poor research in the area of renewable energy. As a first step the authors start with the analysis of the energy current situation and then a number of energy future scenario will be analyzed. In this paper analytical data for the current and future energy situations are briefly presented. Simple models for prediction the energy demands and the oil and natural gas prices are used through this work. The challenges and obstacles faced by the renewable energy sector in Libya are discussed. In order to promote the application of renewable energy a number of recommendations are made. To the best of the knowledge of the authors there is no detailed study or analysis to the current energy situation and the expected scenarios for the renewable energy in Libya and we think that the work in this paper is the first step in the right direction. 2. The Current Energy Situation in Libya Libya depends entirely on fossil fuel for generating its electricity demands. Oil and Natural Gas are the main energy sources. The power plants in Libya depends on the light and heavy oil with an increase reliance on the natural gas in the recent years. The next two subsections summarize the current oil and natural gas situation. Figure 1: Libya crude oil production from 2000 to 2012 Before the revolution in 2011 the main player in the oil industry was the National Oil Corporation (NOC) which is a state-owned company. The NOC has a target of 2.5 million barrels per day (bbl/d) by 2015 but this target can t be achieved until the production levels return to their levels before the conflict in This recovery needs a secure environment and rest in order for the international companies to continue the oil exploration in Libya. Most of the oil resource in Libya is in the eastern part of the country (this area is called Sirte Basin as shown in Figure 2) and around 25% in the southern area (this is called Murzuk Basin). A. The Oil Current Situation Libya is one of the largest oil producers in North Africa and currently is producing 1.4 million barrels per day (bbl/d) compared with 1.68 million barrels per day (bbl/d) before the revolution in February The total crude oil proven reserves is around 47.1 billion barrels [4]. The crude oil production during the last decade is shown in Figure 1. The oil production was suspended because of the revolution which took place in February 2011[4]. Figure 2: The distribution of the oil resource in Libya. Libya net oil production is 1.8 (bbl/d) and around 300 (bbl/d) are consumed for electricity production.

3 B. The Natural Gas Current Situation The natural gas is ranked as the second precious resource for production. The proven natural gas reserves reported in 2012 is 52.8 trillion cubic feet. Libyan natural gas production and consumption is shown in Figure 3. Figure 4: Locations of the electrical power plants Natural Gas Heavey Fuel Oil Light Fuel Oil %25 %44 Figure 3: The natural gas production and consumption from 2000 to 2010 As can we see from Figure 3 most of the produced natural gas is exported. The large change in the gas production starts when the gas pipeline between Libya and Italy starts production where most of the Libyan gas is exported to Italy [4]. The increase in the gas consumption is due to the reliance on the gas instead of the oil for electricity production. C. The Current Electricity Situation To supply the load demands Libya has installed twelve power plants as shown in Figure 4. These power plants are capable for supplying GW while the available capacity is GW. In 2012 the peak demand reached 5.8 GW in the summer due the excessive use of the air conditioners. The energy sector relies on the natural gas, heavy fuel oil and light fuel oil with the percentages shown in Figure 5. The GECOL increased the dependence on the natural gas in order to reduce the CO 2 emission. %31 Figure 5: Types and percentage of gas and fuel used in electricity generation in 2012 The energy consumption is distributed among several load types as shown in Figure. 6. The residential load is the most dominated load with 31% of the total consumed energy. Figure 6: Types and shares of customers of Libyan electricity generation in 2012

4 The electricity in Libya is generated using gas and steam turbines with a total number of Fifteen generation stations. Most of these stations are located in the coastal line, where most of inhabitants live, as shown in Fig.4. It is worth noting that gas and fuel are the only sources used to operate the turbines in the generation stations. Hence, the demand on energy in future will lead to more consumption of oil and gas which will lead to a more carbon dioxide emission as well as reduction in the national economical revenue. The carbon dioxide emission from electricity generation in Libya is much higher than that from transportation or industry. In order to reduce the gas emission from generation substations, the General Electric Company Of Libya (G.E.C.O.L) has reduced the number of units which operate with fuel, and increased the gas based ones. Also the use of combined cycle stations was another alternative solution to minimize fuel consumption. The G.E.C.O.L has also improved its transmission line infrastructure, in order to minimize losses in the network and to improve its efficiency and reliability. The total length of the transmission system (220 KV, 400 KV) is now about 16,000 km, and that of the medium voltage (33 KV, 66 KV) is around 28,000 km. The use of energy in Electricity generation, industry and transportation has not been rationalized in Libya due to different reasons, such as the low price of fuel locally and energy conservative regulator does not exist in Libya yet. As another step toward reducing the gas emission beside the increasing reliance on the natural gas, GECOL has also built a 400 kv transmission system which increases the efficiency and the reliability of the Libyan electricity transmission system. The planned and built 400 kv transmission systems are shown in Figure Load growth in Libya The load growth study is one of an essential subject with regard to load demand prediction. From the annual report of the GECOL which shows the energy consumption in Libya over the last ten years as shown in Figure 8. The regression equation has been derived and then used to predict the load growth at about 9% for each consecutive year. Figure 8: The energy consumption over the last 10 years The demand on energy will substantially increase in the near future in an exponential growth as shown in Figure 9 as a result of economical development. This will lead to more consumption of oil and gas which causes a reduction in the national economical revenue and more carbon dioxide emission. 4. The expected oil and gas prices for electricity As can be expected from Figure 6, The load demand for the electricity consumption will be increased for the long term with 9%. This means that, in the future, the amount of oil used for electricity generation will be substantially increased. Figure 7: The 400 kv Libyan transmission systems

5 Expected Load, GWh Figure 9: Expected load demand for the next 20 years The total price of oil used for electricity generation, for long term, can be calculated from the electricity demand as each barrel of oil can produce 1628 KWh in three steps: First the expected load demand for any prospect time can be figured out from Figure 9. Second this amount of oil can be converted to no of barrels by dividing it over 1628 KWh. Finally, this number of barrels is multiplied by its price predicted by OPEC [6]. For instant in 2030 the expected load demand will be 120 GWh and the number of barrel to cover this generation per day is 194 thousand barrels (bbl/d). This number will be subtracted from the daily Libyan oil export which is about 1.3 million barrel on average. This means that there will be a substantial reduction in oil exportation as a result of electricity usage unless the renewable energy technology is adopted. The use of clean energy such as wind and solar in electricity generation will also lead to the reduction of carbon dioxide emission to some extent. 5. Difficulties and Obstacles The electricity in Libya is subsidized because the country adopted a communist economical system since By the time, the consequences of this policy are clear in the irrational use of electricity by most of the Libyans. Additionally, the peculiarity of the weather and the inefficient design of the homes made the air-conditioning unavoidable. It can be concluded that the increase energy demands in not a result of the country development but rather a consequence of the inefficient use of the energy. 6. Recommendations Libya should initiate a subsidizing plan for renewable energy includes: (i) creation the awareness among the people of the long and short term impacts of the wasteful use of electricity. (ii) Legislations and laws for using low power electrical appliances, and (iii) Added taxes on the wasteful consumption of the electricity. 7. Concluding Remarks The electric energy demand is expected to grow very rapidly in the next few years; The share of renewable energy technology in Libya still very low despite the fact that Libya location is optimum for exploiting this technology. There is a great potential for utilizing, home grid connected photovoltaic systems, large scale grid connected electricity generation using Wind farms, and concentrated photovoltaic system CPS. Solar energy resources in particular can be of great source of energy for Libya after oil and natural gas. Renewable energy resources offer good opportunities for technology transfer and international cooperation. Energy efficiency can be implemented in both energy consumption and production sides. 8. References [1] NASA Atmospheric Science Data Centre, NASA Surface Meteorology and Solar Energy: Available from: Last Accessed 5 th March [2] Libyan climatic archives, Climate Department, Libyan National Meteorological Centre (LNMC). [3] General Electric Company Of Libya GECOL, Annual Report [4] Libya Energy Data, Statistics and Analysis - Oil, Gas, Electricity, Coal at Energy Information Administration: Available from: Last Accessed 14 April [5] Bureau of Energy Data and Studies, LNEC Libyan National Energy Information-sixth edition [6] Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC, World Oil Outlook, [7] Institute of Energy Economics and the Rational Use of Energy (IER) Technical and economical analysis of future perspectives of solar thermal, Germany2010.