A Geospatial Assessment of Small-Scale Hydropower Potential in Sub-Saharan Africa

Alexandros Korkovelos, Dimitrios Mentis, Shahid Hussain Siyal, Christopher Arderne, Holger Rogner, Morgan Bazilian, Mark Howells, Hylke Beck and Ad De Roo
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Alexandros Korkovelos: Division of Energy System Analysis, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 11428 Stockholm, Sweden
Dimitrios Mentis: Division of Energy System Analysis, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 11428 Stockholm, Sweden
Shahid Hussain Siyal: Division of Energy System Analysis, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 11428 Stockholm, Sweden
Christopher Arderne: The World Bank Group, Washington, DC 20433, USA
Holger Rogner: Division of Energy System Analysis, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 11428 Stockholm, Sweden
Morgan Bazilian: Division of Energy System Analysis, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 11428 Stockholm, Sweden
Mark Howells: Division of Energy System Analysis, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 11428 Stockholm, Sweden
Hylke Beck: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
Ad De Roo: European Union Joint Research Centre (EU-JRC), 21027 Ispra, VA, Italy

Energies, 2018, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-21

Abstract: Sub-Saharan Africa has been at the epicenter of an ongoing global dialogue around the issue of energy poverty. More than half of the world’s population without access to modern energy services lives there. It also happens to be a sub-continent with plentiful renewable energy resource potential. Hydropower is one of them, and to a large extent it remains untapped. This study focuses on the technical assessment of small-scale hydropower (0.01–10 MW) in Sub-Saharan Africa. The underlying methodology was based on open source geospatial datasets, whose combination allowed a consistent evaluation of 712,615 km of river network spanning over 44 countries. Environmental, topological, and social constraints were included in the form of constraints in the optimization algorithm. The results are presented on a country and power pool basis.

Keywords: hydropower; Sub-Saharan Africa; geographic information systems; electrification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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