Improving Affordability and Reliability of Energy Access in Uganda with River Turbines 

Partners: Kinetic Hydro, Practical Action, The Challenges Group, University Of Leicester,

Country: Uganda

Technology: Other energy access technology (hydro-kinetic river turbines)

Stage: Early 

Stage: 9

Hydro-kinetic technology is fundamentally different to conventional hydropower that extracts energy from rivers as they drop through a height, or ‘head’. The emergence of small, efficient, free-stream, hydro-kinetic turbines capable of economically generating electricity from the speed of fast-flowing water is a new development. It uses technology transferred from the offshore tidal energy sector, in which the UK has been a world-leader since it began, about twenty years ago.

This project will research how to deliver sustainable and impactful development projects based on hydro-kinetic turbines for the children, women and men living in Ugandan communities near to suitable rivers. Kinetic Hydro Ltd and partners will be use Uganda as a case study to assess the feasibility of hydro-kinetic river turbines contributing to the acceleration of energy access provision. The country has opportunities and barriers to success that will be representative of (but not the same as) others in sub-Saharan Africa. It has low, but accelerating access to electricity, a poor and widely dispersed rural population, and a network of rivers suited to hydro-kinetic turbines.