A spatiotemporal atlas of hydropower in Africa for energy modelling purposes [version 3; peer review: 2 approved, 1 approved with reservations]

Abstract

The modelling of electricity systems with substantial shares of renewable resources, such as solar power, wind power and hydropower, requires datasets on renewable resource profiles with high spatiotemporal resolution to be made available to the energy modelling community. Whereas such resources exist for solar power and wind power profiles on diurnal and seasonal scales across all continents, this is not yet the case for hydropower. Here, we present a newly developed open-access African hydropower atlas, containing seasonal hydropower generation profiles for nearly all existing and several hundred future hydropower plants on the African continent. The atlas builds on continental-scale hydrological modelling in combination with detailed technical databases of hydropower plant characteristics and can facilitate modelling of power systems across Africa.

Keywords

• Hydropower
• energy modelling
• Africa
• resource profiles
• renewables
• decarbonization
• eng