The potential for rooftop solar photovoltaics to meet future electricity demand in Khartoum, Sudan

Abstract

Many sub-Saharan African cities, such as Khartoum - the capital of Sudan, suffer from frequent power outage due to insufficient power capacity. However, the electricity demand in that city is expected to increase by more than 30% from 2020 to 2030. This paper investigates the potential for widescale grid connected residential rooftop solar PV to meet electricity demand increase in Khartoum by 2030. Three different rooftop solar PV sizes were investigated, to represent low, medium, and high energy consumption households. These were 2kW, 4kW and 9kW. The energy software HOMER was used to find the annual energy generation from each system and the Cost Of Electricity (COE). With a 4kW rooftop PV system it was estimated that 420,500 houses would be needed to meet the full electricity demand increase by 2030. If using the 9kW system, then only 187,00 homes would be needed. However, if using a 2kW system then over 841,000 homes would be required. This is a significant challenge for the city. Therefore, to complement rooftop solar PV and to ease the burden on households unable to afford it, the government is recommended to install utility scale solar PV. The government is also recommended to incentivise households to install rooftop solar PV through energy policies such as feed-in tariff or net metering. The financial analysis shows the 4 kW PV system has the lowest COE value of $0.048 per kWh. The COE values were higher than the subsidized grid electricity tariff but lower than the unsubsidized tariff.

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ORCID for Mohamed G, Hassan: orcid.org/0000-0003-3729-4543

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