Solar Thermal Power Plants in West Africa: Site Selection and Potential Assessment

Abstract

Almost one-third of the estimated 1.6 billion people living without access to electricity worldwide live in Africa; access to electricity is especially poor in Sub-Sahara Africa (66 % in South Africa, 57 % in Ghana, 13 % in Burkina Faso, and 7 % in Mozambique). In some countries like landlocked Burkina Faso, electricity production is dominated by diesel plants (68 % in Burkina Faso) whereas the totality of oil consumed in these countries are imported and carried either by train or by road from the coast. This heavily escalates electricity production cost and thereby making its expansion to poor rural and peri-urban areas a mirage. Moreover, environmental concerns are associated with conventional thermal power plants with the release of greenhouse gases and sulphur dioxide, source of acid rains. There is therefore the need to look for alternative sources to produce electricity in a sustainable manner in Africa. In that regard, Solar Thermal Power (STP) Plants appear to be good candidate; however, with the exception of Northern and Southern Africa where extensive work is being conducted, potential assessment of Solar Thermal Power Plant in West Africa is yet to be done. This paper presents results of an ongoing research which aims at assessing the potential of STP for electricity generation in West Africa. The study considered only 1 % of the suitable land area with daily DNI greater or equal to 5 kWh/m 2 .day, a land slope less or equal to 3 % and distance to transmission line not more than 100 km and showed that West Africa has a potential nominal capacity of 20.16 GW for Parabolic trough technology.