Abstract
Access to electricity is poor in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) presents better opportunities for increasing access to electricity and for diversifying sources of energy in the ECOWAS region; however, to date, except for Burkina Faso, no site evaluation pertaining to the region has ever been performed for CSP. This study provides potential assessment and site ranking for large-scale CSP projects in the ECOWAS region. It computes the nominal potential power and gives the corresponding energy yield with many scenarios. By considering only 1% of the suitable land area with daily DNI greater or equal to 5 kWh/m2, a land slope less or equal to 5% and distance to transmission line not more than 100 km, the study showed, for example, that West Africa has a potential nominal capacity of 21.3 GW for parabolic trough technology.
Highlights
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional group of fifteen countries
Access to electricity is poor in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) presents better opportunities for increasing access to electricity and for diversifying sources of energy in the ECOWAS region; to date, except for Burkina Faso, no site evaluation pertaining to the region has ever been performed for CSP
Summary
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional group of fifteen countries. Its mission is to promote economic integration in all fields of economic activity, industry, transport, telecommunications, energy, agriculture, natural resources, commerce, monetary and financial questions, social and cultural matters. The region has some of the lowest modern energy consumption rates in the world with average electricity consumption of 120 kWh/capita compared to the continental and global averages of 529 and 2570 kWh/capita respectively [1]. Household access to electricity across the region is about 20% but wide differences exist between the access rates in urban areas that average 43% while rates in rural areas range between 6% and 8% [2]. Biomass represents one of the main energy resources of the member States
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