For electrical engineers, the transit of power between the source and the consuming load must respect the principle of balance.
Unfortunately, this balance is affected by pollution of the power consumed, through the polluting loads of electrical energy.
From where an instability in tension and in power appear; one of the causes of this instability corresponds to a high load. In the case of the medium voltage-low voltage network, this is due to the growing increase in demand and a large transfer.
of energy between the source of energy which is the transformer cabin and the consumers, which are the subscribers of the SNEL company.
The SNEL network is subject to voltage instability because the load becomes too high than expected and the risk is all the greater when the consumption of reactive energy is also greater than expected.
The low voltage electricity network of the city of Kolwezi is not spared from electrical energy pollution, the quality of the voltage and the power even consumed daily leaves something to be desired and raises more questions.
If there’s one area where rigor and caution are essential, it’s electrical installation.
Electrical installations age. On the one hand, of course, because all materials age, depending on how they are used. On the other hand, the uses to which electricity is put have developed considerably, and many old installations were not designed for these multiple and different uses.
Today, there are several dwellings (houses, stores, kiosks), and some houses have been demolished to make way for large low-cost buildings or even hotels on the same plots of land once occupied by a single house. This increases the current demand on a mother cable originally designed for a single house.
In addition to this situation, the exodus from the province of Lualaba, and in particular the town of Kolwezi, is currently registering a veritable explosion in its working population.
This situation is becoming even more acute in the town of Kolwezi, where the demand for electrical energy has grown exponentially.
Today, not only are we witnessing power cuts, but also recurrent fires in homes and even in electrical installations, a source of tension caused by electrical fires.
To remedy this situation, two hypotheses have been put forward:
The first is to rehabilitate the low-voltage power grid, and the second is to increase the power available to Kolwezi’s low-voltage grid (construction of new power injection points).
Both hypotheses required first determining the current energy demand of the city of Kolwezi, which today has risen from 7MW to 25MW, and inventorying all the plots where the installed electrical power has been drastically increased.
The conclusion is that both hypotheses have been retained to finally achieve stability in the supply of electrical energy.