An Open Research Europe Data Note that presents a newly developed (in 2021) open access African hydropower atlas, has been cited in articles recently published in Science and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Spectrum magazine.
As the Data Note explains, the modelling of electricity systems with substantial shares of renewable resources, such as solar power, wind power and hydropower, requires datasets on renewable resource profiles with high spatiotemporal resolution to be made available to the energy modelling community. Whereas such resources exist for solar power and wind power profiles on diurnal and seasonal scales across all continents, this is not yet the case for hydropower.
The Data Note and atlas present a newly developed open access African hydropower atlas, containing seasonal hydropower generation profiles for nearly all existing and several hundred future hydropower plants on the African continent. The atlas builds on continental-scale hydrological modelling in combination with detailed technical databases of hydropower plant characteristics and can facilitate modelling of power systems across Africa. The continued and recent citations of the Data Note and atlas underline the importance of this resource.
To read the Data Note and learn more about Open Research Europe visit: https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/