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152 sats \ 1 reply \ @KenyaCoin 9 Jun freebie \ on: Is MARA DIGITAL a net negative for Africa conspiracy
There's very little detail shared publicly as to what will actually be done as a result of the MARA DIGITAL agreement.
Ironically, many of the power purchase agreements (PPAs) involving the parastatals and power producers (who oftentimes are not an "arm's length" away), have been very opaque as well. Quite often it is years or decades later (if ever) when it is exposed what the actual agreements were and what payment flows ultimately resulted.
But essentially, these are mostly "take or pay" power purchase agreements. For example, consider the Lake Turkana Wind Farm in which Google was initially backing. Once they had completed the construction, there was hundreds of MW of wind capacity sitting idle ... for years, as the high voltage transmission lines for carrying the power to the national grid were not completed in time. But that wind farm continued to receive the income for that capacity, as "take or pay" means exactly that -- where or not you consume the power you have the option to take, you pay for it regardless.
This means there are pockets of excess capacity in various parts of the country where these Take or Pay agreements currently are resulting in paying without taking. In those instances, the cost of consuming the excess power is essentially zero, because it has already been paid for.
If I had to guess, I would say that is the opportunity that the MARA DIGITAL seeks to leverage.
The other wildcard is the capacity brought in to Kenya from the north -- the hydroelectric dams including the GERD (Great Ethiopian Renaissance Dam). That electricity is available at a cheaper cost than what can be produced domestically. But the demand within Kenya isn't there yet. The transmission lines are completed, but there's no buyer today for those kWHs. With a very young population, Kenya's economy will eventually consume all of that capacity, but today, there's little ability to profit from the immediate access to vast amounts of cheap power. Enter MARA DIGITAL. (And if you are wondering why MARA isn't in Ethiopia instead, ... well, that country today has multiple simultaneous civil wars, in various stages of hot conflict.)
Here's more on the Take or Pay (versus Pay when Taken) argument:
Why we must review our electricity purchase deals
Seems you answered a lot of questions I had.
Seems crazy that much of renewable PPA do not necessarily benefit the majority of energy consumers. Increasing generation capacity or building infrastructure will have associated costs which are not always obvious on the face of it. These projects have to source funding and that will often translate to trickle down costs being borne by consumers (tax increases for other infrastructure which was not budgeted for) or simply higher energy prices for under-utilized production.
I read a very good analysis of the cost of maintaining European offshore wind turbines, basically they were negative yielding from installation. Perhaps solar or hydro has better projections? Obviously in this scenario, tapping into stray energy seems like the right thing for encouraging economic development. Take or pay sounds like it's just pushing the volatility from generator to purchaser. Then I guess you have brokers in the middle trying to onboard more of both and arbitrage the volatility.
When it comes to net positive or negative, I'd say problems we see in developed economies are often arising in the execution of these projects. Energy companies are going to want to maximize revenue and this often comes at a cost to consumers who deal with government financing.
Also, if many of these ventures are going to involve foreign entities, they should be based on having a majority local workforce, contractors should always be selling both skills as well as tech as part of infrastructure deals. Not sure how this stands in Kenya or Ethiopia, or in any African nation that has private energy contractors working there, but seems to be a pattern in other industries where governments negotiate for foreign investment (transportation, telecommunications etc.) and in outsourcing models, particularly with consideration to different scales of populations.
Nationally or regionally, there seems to be homogenous workforces and some very international. I think reciprocation would be a key issue.
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