ModelsSouthern Africa
Southern African Power Pool
An hourly, zonal dispatch model of the Southern African Power Pool, built entirely from public data. South Africa is split into nine transmission zones and connected to eleven member countries through their existing interconnectors.
Scope
What the model covers
- 20 zones and 29 linksSouth Africa has nine provincial zones (Eskom supply areas). The other zones are Angola, Botswana, the DRC, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
- South Africa in detailThe 14 Eskom coal stations, Koeberg, the Eskom and IPP gas turbines, and the Drakensberg, Ingula and Palmiet pumped-storage schemes are modelled individually. Wind, solar PV and concentrated solar follow the hourly 2024 output and installed capacity in Eskom's data portal, and coal availability follows Eskom's hourly outage factors.
- TransmissionLimits between South African zones come from mapped 220–765 kV circuits and standard conductor ratings, with an N-1 margin. Cross-border limits are those published by the power pool for existing interconnectors.
- SolutionThe full year runs as sequential 48-hour linear optimisations, with pumped-storage levels carried from one window to the next. It uses an open-source interior-point solver.
Releases