Capability of Zambian industries to manufacture grid-scale wind turbine blades and towers.

The Zambian electricity grid system has been dominated by hydropower at 96 %, 2.1 % thermal and 1.7 % renewable (Kaluminiana, n.d.). During the 2014 - 2015 rainy season, Zambia received very low rains which led to reduced electricity production at the two major power plants. In the light of this situation, there was a push towards diversification in the power generation mix to achieve a more resilient energy system. This quest for diversification has led to the inception of grid-scale wind power feasibility studies at ten sites distributed around the country. These feasibility studies were aimed at establishing the availability of the wind resource for grid-scale power generation. This will lead to the development of the wind power industry in Zambia. However, these studies did not investigate the capability of local support industries, this research intends to bridge that knowledge gap. The purpose of this study was to investigate and profile the capability of Zambian industries to manufacture wind turbine (WT) blades and towers. The study used a mixed-method approach to collect data, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed in a complementary manner. The population of Zambian industries was collected from the Zambia Association of Manufacturers (ZAM) based on the 2018 registered members. This data was used to define the population for the study. The population was arranged in three strata whose characteristics are homogeneous within each stratum. Due to the low population, the study was conducted on the whole population. The quantitative data was collected from each stratum using a quantitative data collection tool developed for each stratum and analysed. A review of the wind resource assessment projects has demonstrated that there are Class III and Class IV sites in certain parts of Zambia. The results from this study have revealed that on an as-is basis there are no companies in Zambia which can manufacture WT blades and towers.