Liberia: Public Clarity Needed on Status of Liberia’s Cross-border Electricity Trade
By Jimmy Nyanwapolu, Energy Policy Analyst
As the government of Liberia transitions to the next leadership in January 2024, public expectations of basic social and economic services will kick very high. The electricity sector, being one of those services Liberians benefit intermittently, the incoming government will be expected to maintain or improve upon the current level of access. This expectation must be maintained in the first 100 days of the new regime, which falls within a very crucial climatic horizon of Liberia, the dry season.
The dry season, which staggers from November through April, strongly impacts Liberia’s electricity supply and peak demand with serious consequences of acute power rationing and outages. To manage the people’s expectations of relative electricity availability, the Liberia Electricity Corporation and the Liberia Electricity Regulatory Commission (LERC) must provide public clarity on the status of the country’s cross-border electricity trade with neighboring Ivory Coast. The Ivorian’s CI Energies company had supplied Liberia electricity more than a contracted PPA of 27MW through the West African Power Pool CLSG networks. It was meant to meet a national peak power demand of 74MW during the dry season due to reduction in capacity of the Mt Coffee Hydroelectric plant. Back in May 2023, according to a LEC press release, CIE restricted its supply of electricity to only the 27MW contracted PPA. This resulted to undersupply of the national peak load of 74MW and led to massive 6-12hrs power rationing and outages. Unconfirmed sources reported that the supply restriction was due to Liberia’s failure to timely settle its power import debt with CI Energies, thus forfeiting the overage power supply.
In August of this year, management of the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC) confirmed a statement by Finance Minister, Samuel Tweah at a political campaign rally that Liberia was exporting electricity to the Ivory Coast because of excess power generated from the Mt Coffee hydroelectric plant due to increased water inflow of the plant during the rainy season. Though the statement sent mixed reactions among the citizenry who were experiencing irregular domestic power supply, LEC Chief Executive Officer, Monie Captan confirmed Minister Tweah’s pronouncement that Liberia generated $547,933 from the power export. Mr. Captan said this electricity export revenue managed to offset Liberia’s CIE debt of $76,740 saving a net power export income of $471,193. With this income statement analysis, it is worth concluding that Liberia should be in a better power import and export standing with the Ivory Coast during the dry and wet seasons, respectively.
To avoid future restrictions on excess imported power supply to Liberia from Ivory Coast, especially during the upcoming dry season, it is imperative that the LEC and LERC jointly provide public clarity to the Liberians and domestic customers as part of the transitional process to guarantee the incoming government and the public of a stable and financially unhindered peak demand supply of electricity until the next wet season. This public clarity by the state-owned electric utility and its regulator is essential to assure their electric customers’ expectations of power availability within the first 100 days of the new regime and going forward. Upholding the public right to be informed on deliveries of critical utility services is a regulatory governance best practice in securing public interest.