Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10316/115057
Title: Generation capacity expansion planning with spatially-resolved electricity demand and increasing variable renewable energy supply: Perspectives from power pooling in West Africa
Authors: Bissiri, Mounirah 
Moura, Pedro 
Perez, Ricardo Cunha
Figueiredo, Nuno Carvalho 
Silva, Patrícia Pereira da 
Keywords: Variable renewable energy; Spatial granularity; Time granularity; Stochastic Dual Dynamic Programming; Power generation expansion planning; West Africa
Issue Date: Jun-2024
Publisher: Elsevier
Project: UIDB/05037/2020 
info:eu-repo/grantAgreemen/UIDB/00308/2020 
Serial title, monograph or event: Applied Energy
Volume: 364
Abstract: Power pooling has emerged as a regional strategy for accelerating generation capacity expansion in West Africa with the aim of leveraging vast domestic energy resources and promoting investment in regional power infrastructure. As part of their climate action pledges, most West African countries have committed to increasing the shares of variable renewable energy (VRE), particularly solar photovoltaic and wind power, in their generation mix. It, however, appears that approaches to utility-scale capacity expansion planning tend to overlook the inherent temporal intermittency and spatial variability of VRE-based generation. Moreover, despite influencing the techno-economic rationale for grid expansion and off-grid electrification, as well as the trade-offs between high renewable supply areas and grid expansion, the spatial distribution of demand has been overlooked in planning approaches, leading to conservative and weak prospects for the contribution of utility-scale VRE. Such inconsistencies with the region-wide potentials and policy ambitions highlight that it is paramount for West Africa to design its power pooling such that spatial and temporal fluctuations of VRE supply are duly considered in capacity expansion planning while taking advantage of complementarities between VRE supply and national electricity demand profiles. To address this, the present paper applies a long-term generation capacity expansion model, OptGen, soft-linked to a least-cost operation module, the SDDP tool, which is enhanced by geospatial electrification analysis using the OpeN Source Spatial Electrification Tool (OnSSET), to a subset of four member countries of the West African Power Pool – Burkina Faso, Cˆ ote d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Mali – for the 2023–2040 time horizon. The results highlight that current frameworks lead to missed opportunities for bridging the supply- demand gap in all countries, not only in terms of VRE generation capacity, but also of cross-border power trade.
URI: https://hdl.handle.net/10316/115057
ISSN: 0306-2619
DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.123115
Rights: openAccess
Appears in Collections:I&D CeBER - Artigos em Revistas Internacionais
FCTUC Eng.Electrotécnica - Artigos em Revistas Internacionais
I&D ISR - Artigos em Revistas Internacionais
I&D INESCC - Artigos em Revistas Internacionais

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