The integration of renewable energies into the electricity systems of North Africa

Abstract

The North African electricity systems are in a phase of rapid transformation. The ever-increasing electricity demand - with annual growth rates of more than 6% - is placing great strain on the regional economies, especially in times of economic downturn and political instability in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The pressing need to upgrade electricity infrastructures, however, also offers outstanding opportunities: North African countries can step out of their accustomed national planning strategies and reshape their electricity systems in a more sustainable and coordinated manner. Renewable energies, in particular solar and wind power, are set to play a paramount role in such future supply schemes, as recent announcements of national renewable energy targets by North African governments show. A further topic that received high attention in the past few years, particularly in the media, are potential renewable power exports from North Africa to Europe. Despite these prospects, many open questions still remain related to the actual consequences of an increased integration of electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E) in North Africa. How would the existing conventional power systems interact with increasing renewable feed-in? What are the optimized proportions of the three key renewable technologies (wind, photovoltaics, and concentrated solar power) in the generation mixes? What are the challenges for the regional electricity transmission systems - also with regards to potential power exchanges with Europe? These questions were explored with quantitative electricity system modeling methods in the present dissertation. Large parts of the thesis are built around a bottom-up linear optimization tool which calculates cost-minimized expansion pathways for different mid-term scenarios (usually until 2030) for the North African electricity systems. The model results allow conclusions about cost-optimized power plant portfolios, the commissioning/retirements of power plant capacities, evolution of the fuel mix in power generation, and even projections of needed transmission capacities to interconnect North African countries among themselves and abroad. The key results demonstrate that renewable energy integration can offer considerable opportunities for the North Africa economies, provided that technology choices, capacity expansion strategies, and the associated transmission infrastructures are planned in a coordinated and efficient manner. With regards to the transmission system, for example, it could be shown that savings of over €3 billion could be achieved just by applying a coordinated planning approach among the five North African countries. Concerning the expansion of renewable generation capacity, cost optimized pathways should initially focus on wind and photovoltaic technologies as long as their intermittency can be balanced out by the existing conventional power plant system. Only in later stages, when high levels of renewable generation are to be reached, the implementation of dispatchable, storage-based concentrated solar power (CSP) technologies becomes economically viable. The same accounts for the electricity exports to Europe: the model results indicate that the overall renewable penetration in North Africa levels must reach very high levels (more than 60% of domestic demand) before exports to Europe can be performed in a noticeable manner on integrated and competitive Mediterranean electricity markets.