Journal Article

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

Korkovelos, Alexandros, Rogner, Holger, Beck, Hylke, Mentis, Dimitrios, Bazilian, Morgan, De Roo, Ad, Siyal, Shahid Hussain, Arderne, Christopher, Howells, Mark

2018

Overview

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.

• Publisher: MDPI AG
• Subject: Alternative energy sources / Economic and social effects / Electricity / Electrification / Energy poverties / Fossil fuels / Geographic information systems / Hydroelectric plants / Hydroelectric power / Hydrology / Hydropower / Hydropower potential / Optimization algorithms / River networks / Rural areas / Rural electrification / Social constraints / Studies / Sub-Saharan Africa / Sustainable development / Technical assessment