Assessment of solar photovoltaic potential of selected site locations in cities across sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Abstract Despite the successes recorded over the years, photovoltaic (PV) cells’ power conversion efficiency (PCE) of commercially available crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV panels still hovers between 10 and 21%. For optimal performance at 17–21% PCE, certain factors need to be understood and addressed. This study estimates the solar PV potential of selected cities across Africa, using computational modelling. The selected sites’ cities are Abuja, Addis Ababa, Kinshasa, Pretoria, and Tripoli. Sites’ coordinate systems will be exploited to generate data from meteorological databases of the selected locations needed for the PV potential assessment. This information coupled with PV system configuration will be used as inputs for PV design and simulation. The PV potential of the selected location will be extracted from the resulting simulation reports in terms of irradiance, possible power output generation, performance ratio (PR) and capacity factor (CF). The study results and analysis as extracted from the reports of the modelled hypothetical 10-kWhp c-Si rooftop PV systems at the selected sited locations, show that—Pretoria possesses the highest GTI (2234.4 kWh/m 2 ) and the lowest GTI (1766.7 kWh/m 2 ) was observed in Kinshasa; Pretoria has the highest PV power output (PVOUT) (17.292 MWh/), and the least (13.678 MWh) in Kinshasa; the highest PR (77.4%) was observed in Kinshasa and Pretoria and the lowest PR (76.4%) in Tripoli; Pretoria and Kinshasa recorded the highest CF (19.7%) and lowest CF (15.6%), respectively. The results indicate that the examined locations are technically viable for the PV system schemes, and therefore, massive deployment of this technology in these areas is advised.