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

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. Hydr...

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Published inEnergies (Basel) Vol. 11; no. 11; p. 3100
Main Authors Korkovelos, Alexandros, Mentis, Dimitrios, Siyal, Shahid, Arderne, Christopher, Rogner, Holger, Bazilian, Morgan, Howells, Mark, Beck, Hylke, De Roo, Ad
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.11.2018
Subjects
Alternative energy sources
Economic and social effects
Electricity
Electrification
Energy poverties
Fossil fuels
Geographic information systems
Hydroelectric plants
Hydroelectric power
Hydroelectric resources
Hydrology
Hydropower
Hydropower potential
Optimization algorithms
River networks
Rural areas
Rural electrification
Social constraints
Studies
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sustainable development
Technical assessment
South Africa
United States > US
Sub-Saharan Africa
Africa
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en11113100