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Martinager gravatar image
RedR

A useful websie for comparative tarifs is Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_tariff#Global_Electricity_Tariffs_Comparison Unfortunately it is out of date and does not have details of any of the countries that you list apart from South Africa.

Looking at my domestic electricity bill here in Zimbabwe there is a sliding scale as follows;

First 45 Kva at US$0.024/Kva Next 225Kva at US$0.112/Kva Therefter 0.150/Kva On top of this I pay a 6% rural electrification levy.

There is a move to change over to pre-paid meters though I have not been changed yet. For those buying pre-paid credit it is slightly more expensive for the low users but cheaper for anyone who uses more.

There are different rates for agricultural and industrial users as can be seen in the out of date tarif structure at https://www.cfuzim.org/images/zesatar13.pdf. Similar information can probably be found on the Internet for other countries.

Whether this is subsidised or truly reflects the cost of production I do not know. While power was very cheap here a few years ago it has risen to meet market prices as the government is not in a position to subsidise anything. A significant part of the electricity both here in Zimbabwe and in Zambia comes from the Kariba hydro-electric station with most of the rest of the domestic production coming from Hwange coal fired station.

The Southern African Power Pool (https://www.sapp.co.zw/) provides a mechanism for trading electricity between countries in the region. At the moment there is generally a surplus from the Cabora Bassa hydro-electric station in Mozambique. Zimbabwe also imports electricity from South Africa where there is a mix of HEP, thermal and nuclear stations. The region as a whole does not have sufficient generating capacity and there is frequent load shedding here and even in South Africa now.

While price is very important, especially for small users, reliability of supply with mini grid systems may also be attractive, especially where irrigation is involved and a long power cut can lead to crop failure.