Advancing Resilient Renewable Energy Deployment in Africa: A Weather-Aware Optimization Framework

Ensuring reliable energy supply and infrastructure resilience in Africa requires renewable energy (RE) deployment that takes into account the continent’s pronounced weather variability. Here, we introduce a weather-aware framework that integrates multi-criteria decision analysis with assessments of meteorological variability to optimize renewable site selection. Optimal solar and wind energy deployment locations are identified using an adapted methodology. These sites are chosen not only by their highest average resource potential but also by evaluating weather variability at each location. We provide insights into generation variability from these optimal deployment sites under major climate oscillations, including the Madden–Julian Oscillation (MJO) modulated by the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. In addition, a set of novel Africa-centric synoptic regimes (AORs) are derived through Self-Organizing Map cluster analysis, providing insight into region-specific drivers of variability that are often missed by global modes like the MJO. Detailed country-level renewable yield estimates under these dominant meteorological patterns are provided along with their frequencies of occurrence. Our findings highlight a critical need for sub-seasonal to seasonal (S2S) forecasting of these regimes to enhance system resilience. While AORs linked to large-scale oscillations like the MJO may inherit its known predictive skill, the predictability of more localized African regimes remains a critical challenge. By explicitly linking generation variability from optimized RE deployment locations to underlying climate drivers, this framework offers a robust pathway for optimizing RE expansion across the continent.