Quantifying agricultural productive use of energy load in Sub-Saharan Africa and its impact on microgrid configurations and costs

Farthing, Amanda; Rosenlieb, Evan; Steward, Darlene; Reber, Tim; Njobvu, Clement; Moyo, Chrispin

doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.121131

Title: Quantifying agricultural productive use of energy load in Sub-Saharan Africa and its impact on microgrid configurations and costs

Journal Article · Tue May 16 00:00:00 EDT 2023 · Applied Energy

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2023.121131· OSTI ID:1984216

^[1]; Rosenlieb, Evan ^[1];

^[1]; Reber, Tim ^[1]; Njobvu, Clement ^[2]; Moyo, Chrispin ^[3]

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
Centre for Energy, Environment, and Engineering Zambia (CEEEZ) (Zambia)
Department of Agriculture (Zambia)

The use of advanced energy technologies for agricultural purposes—such as irrigation, refrigeration, crop processing, and egg incubation—has the potential to increase crop yield, reduce vulnerability to changing precipitation patterns, increase shelf life, strengthen income and employment opportunities in rural areas, and reduce emissions by displacing fossil fuel-based technologies. These productive uses of energy (PUE) in remote areas could potentially be powered by microgrids that additionally serve otherwise unelectrified communities, most of which are located in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Here, in this paper, we use high-resolution geospatial data to estimate the end-use electricity demand for a range of agricultural PUE across Sub-Saharan Africa, and we share these data in an open-access mapping tool. Next, we use REopt®, a techno-economic optimization model of energy systems, to determine the cost and system sizing implications of incorporating agricultural PUE into microgrid designs in Kenya and Zambia. We estimate the upper bound of agricultural PUE demand for irrigation, milling, shelling, refrigeration, and egg incubation across Sub-Saharan to be 16.8 TWh/yr. We find that incorporating local agricultural PUE into microgrid system designs increases the required system sizing while having minimal impact on the levelized cost of energy of these systems. Our analysis is the first to demonstrate the PUE potential in the agricultural sector at a 10x10-kilometer resolution across Sub-Saharan Africa and to show, at scale, how site-specific PUE can impact the cost and sizing of microgrids that are otherwise deployed to serve local household and community load.

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Research Organization:: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of International Affairs (IA)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC36-08GO28308

OSTI ID:: 1984216

Report Number(s):: NREL/JA-7A40-84725; MainId:85498; UUID:052814ec-adcb-4014-9b8a-e4a51a6e3dfb; MainAdminID:69699

Journal Information:: Applied Energy, Vol. 343; ISSN 0306-2619

Publisher:: ElsevierCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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