Lighting the World: the first application of an open source, spatial electrification tool (OnSSET) on Sub-Saharan Africa

Mentis, Dimitris; Howells, Mark; Rogner, Hans‐Holger; Korkovelos, Alexandros; Arderne, Christopher; Zepeda, Eduardo; Siyal, Shahid Hussain; Taliotis, Constantinos; Bazilian, Morgan; Roo, Ad de; Tanvez, Yann; Oudalov, Alexandre; Scholtz, Ernst

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa7b29

Cited by 183 publications

(162 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…While the dominant strategy to provide electricity access is to construct large generation projects and extend the grid, the often sparse population in sub-Saharan Africa makes grid extension and individual connections prohibitively expensive (Morrissey 2017). Decentralized energy options such as distributed solar PV and mini-hydro mini-grids are cost-competitive alternatives to grid extension, and could rapidly advance the DRC's universal energy access goals (Szabó et al (2016), Mentis et al (2017)).…”

Section: Decentralized Solutions For Energy Accessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Renewable energy alternatives to mega hydropower: a case study of Inga 3 for Southern Africa

Deshmukh

Mileva²,

2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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We assess the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of renewable energy alternatives to Inga 3, a 4.8-GW hydropower project on the Congo River, to serve the energy needs of the host country, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the main buyer, South Africa. To account for a key uncertainty in the literature regarding the additional economic impacts of managing variable wind and solar electricity, we built a spatially and temporally detailed power system investment model for South Africa. We find that a mix of wind, solar photovoltaics, and some natural gas is more cost-effective than Inga 3 to meet future demand except in scenarios with pessimistic assumptions about wind technology performance. If a low load growth forecast is used, including Inga 3 in the power mix results in higher system cost across all sensitivities. In our scenarios, the effect of Inga 3 deployment on South African power system cost ranges from an increase of ZAR 4300 (US$ 330) million annually to savings of ZAR 1600 (US$ 120) million annually by 2035. A cost overrun as low as 20% makes the Inga 3 scenarios more expensive in all sensitivity cases. Including time and cost overruns and losses in transmission from DRC to South Africa make Inga 3 an even less attractive investment. For DRC, through analysis of spatial datasets representing technical, physical, and environmental constraints, we find abundant renewable energy potential: 60 GW of solar photovoltaic and 0.6-2.3 GW of wind located close to transmission infrastructure have levelized costs less than US$ 0.07 per kWh, or the anticipated cost of Inga 3 to residential consumers.

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Section: Decentralized Solutions For Energy Accessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Renewable energy alternatives to mega hydropower: a case study of Inga 3 for Southern Africa

Deshmukh

Mileva²,

2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…Two interesting and complementary papers are featured in this focus issue. The first by Mentis et al (2017) presents results of a geographical information system (OnSSET) approach, coupled with open access data on sub-Saharan Africa. The paper presents least-cost electrification strategies on a country-by-country basis, taking into account an array of options: grid extension, mini-grid and stand-alone systems for various settlement types and loads.…”

Section: Energy Planning For Sustainable Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy access for sustainable development

Mulugetta

Hagan

Kammen³

2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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It is abundantly clear that adequate, reliable and clean energy services are vital for the achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In essence, energy access has come to represent one of the intractable challenges in development, and therefore emblematic of the call for poverty eradication, and economic and social transformation. This focus issue on 'Energy Access for Sustainable Development' is initiated to draw broadly from the ideas and emerging experiences with energy activities and solutions that sought to enhance sustainable development through expansion of energy access. The focus issue includes several contributions from authors on some of the knowledge gaps this field, including: (i) the role of off-grid and mini-grid energy systems to meet multiple SDGs; (ii) the impacts of the evolving suite of off-grid and distributed energy services on inequalities across gender, and on minority and disadvantaged communities; (iii) the opportunities that the evolving technology base (both of energy services and information systems) plays in expanding the role of off-grid and mini-grid energy systems; (iv) energy options for cooking; (v) new insights into energy planning as well as the political economy, institutional and decision challenges across the energy system. Drawing from papers in this focus issue and other literature, this paper provides a sketch of the key issues in energy access.

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“…In granting universal access to power, the model considers grid and off-grid options, five per-capita power (Mentis et al 2017) consumption scenarios (Tier 1 to Tier 5) 1 and two diesel prices. 2 The model decides on the least costly option after comparing the costs of connecting to the central grid, to a mini grid, or to stand-alone solutions.…”

Section: Electricity For All In Africa: Which Costs?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the contrary, in low power demand settings decentralized generating options and stand-alone options could contribute considerably to the achievement of universal access. Reasonably, as diesel prices increase there is a shift to greater deployment of renewable mini-grids, at the expense of diesel based stand-alone and mini-grid systems (Mentis et al 2017). Mentis et al (2017) This seminal model is not only useful to understand how SSA's power systems can develop in the future, but it is also useful to understand the investment required in the five per-capita power consumption scenarios.…”

Section: Electricity For All In Africa: Which Costs?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy in Africa

Häfner¹,

Tagliapietra²,

Strasser³

2018

SpringerBriefs in Energy

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Energy in Africa Challenges and Opportunities SpringerBriefs in EnergySpringerBriefs in Energy presents concise summaries of cutting-edge research and practical applications in all aspects of Energy. Featuring compact volumes of 50-125 pages, the series covers a range of content from professional to academic. Typical topics might include:• A snapshot of a hot or emerging topic • A contextual literature review • A timely report of state-of-the art analytical techniques • An in-depth case study • A presentation of core concepts that students must understand in order to make independent contributions.Briefs allow authors to present their ideas and readers to absorb them with minimal time investment. Briefs will be published as part of Springer's eBook collection, with millions of users worldwide. In addition, Briefs will be available for individual print and electronic purchase. Briefs are characterized by fast, global electronic dissemination, standard publishing contracts, easy-to-use manuscript preparation and formatting guidelines, and expedited production schedules. We aim for publication 8-12 weeks after acceptance.Both solicited and unsolicited manuscripts are considered for publication in this series. Briefs can also arise from the scale up of a planned chapter. Instead of simply contributing to an edited volume, the author gets an authored book with the space necessary to provide more data, fundamentals and background on the subject, methodology, future outlook, etc. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affi...

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Lighting the World: the first application of an open source, spatial electrification tool (OnSSET) on Sub-Saharan Africa

Cited by 183 publications

References 36 publications

Renewable energy alternatives to mega hydropower: a case study of Inga 3 for Southern Africa

Renewable energy alternatives to mega hydropower: a case study of Inga 3 for Southern Africa

Energy access for sustainable development

Energy in Africa

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