1 Solar Thermal Power Plants in West Africa: Site selection and potential assessment E.W. RAMDÉ *,† ; Y. AZOUMAH * ; A. RUNGUNDU * ; G. TAPSOBA * ABSTRACT Almost one-third of the estimated 1.6 billion people living without access to electricity worldwide live in Africa; access to electricity is especially poor in Sub-Sahara Africa (66 % in South Africa, 57 % in Ghana, 13 % in Burkina Faso, and 7 % in Mozambique). In some countries like landlocked Burkina Faso, electricity production is dominated by diesel plants (68 % in Burkina Faso) whereas the totality of oil consumed in these countries are imported and carried either by train or by road from the coast. This heavily escalates electricity production cost and thereby making its expansion to poor rural and peri-urban areas a mirage. Moreover, environmental concerns are associated with conventional thermal power plants with the release of greenhouse gases and sulphur dioxide, source of acid rains. There is therefore the need to look for alternative sources to produce electricity in a sustainable manner in Africa. In that regard, Solar Thermal Power (STP) Plants appear to be good candidate; however, with the exception of Northern and Southern Africa where extensive work is being conducted, potential assessment of Solar Thermal Power Plant in West Africa is yet to be done. This paper presents results of an ongoing research which aims at assessing the potential of STP for electricity generation in West Africa. The study considered only 1 % of the suitable land area with daily DNI greater or equal to 5 kWh/m 2 .day, a land slope less or equal to 3 % and distance to transmission line not more than 100 km and showed that West Africa has a potential nominal capacity of 20.16 GW for Parabolic trough technology. Keywords: Solar, power plants, site selection, potential, West Africa INTRODUCTION West Africa has some of the lowest modern energy consumption rates in the world with average electricity consumption of 88 kWh/capita compared to the continental and global averages of 563 and 2596 kWh/capita respectively. Direct Normal Irradiation (DNI) which is the ‘fuel’ for Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is relatively high in some part of region. Hence CSP presents better opportunities for increasing access to electricity and for diversifying sources of energy in West Africa; however, to date no CSP plant has been installed in the region and none is under construction. Moreover, except for Burkina Faso, no site evaluation in West Africa has ever been performed for CSP. This study aims at filling that gap by evaluating and ranking suitable sites for large-scale CSP projects. It further computes the potential nominal power for different technologies with many scenarios. LITERATURE REVIEW Selecting an appropriate site for concentrating power plant has been the subject of many studies. Azoumah et al., (2010) provided technical guidelines for selecting a suitable site for CSP projects in the Sahel. The guidelines were applied in selecting a candidate site in Burkina Faso. Broesamle et al., (2001) made use of satellite data and Geographic Information System (GIS) to rank potential sites for CSP in North Africa. Bravo et al., (2007) in considering parabolic trough plants with 6 hours thermal storage, used GIS and found a generation ceiling of 9,897 TWh/y for Spain; After taking just 1% of the whole wasteland in China as potential site for solar thermal power plant and assuming a land area requirement of 20,234 m²/MW of installed capacity for power tower technology, Hang et al., (2008) showed that 1,300 GW of electricity generation capacity could be installed. Fluri, (2009) also used GIS to identify potential areas for the implementation of large scale CSP plant in South Africa; assuming * Laboratoire Energie Solaire et Economie d’Energie (LESEE), International Institute for Water and Environmental Engineering, Burkina Faso. † Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana - Corresponding author: emmanuel.ramde@2ie-edu.org