Modelling the impacts of climate extremes on Africa's future power systems

As Africa accelerates to become one of the world’s largest integrated electricity markets and sets the target to increase renewable generation capacity, the continent’s power systems are becoming more vulnerable to extreme weather and climate events. With growing shares of renewable resources in the power mix, events such as heatwaves, periods of low wind and solar availability or prolonged hydrological drought periods —so-called energy droughts— threaten to challenge the continent’s power system resilience. However,  little is known about how these climate extremes interact with Africa’s rapidly evolving power infrastructure. In this study, we identify and characterise the climate extremes that could impact future African power systems. By integrating the power system design from the African Continental Masterplan with decades of weather and climate data, we examine how variability in wind, solar and hydropower generation, coupled with temperature-driven demand peaks, shape periods of power system stress. Power system stress is  measured through load shedding in high resolution dispatch simulations, developed in the PyPSA modelling framework. We will evaluate scenarios of increasing inter- and intra- regional connections between power pools to investigate whether interconnection alleviates power system stress periods by leveraging Africa’s diverse resource potential and complementary spatio-temporal profiles. In this way, this research aims to inform energy planners and policymakers about strategies that enhance the resilience of Africa’s future power systems to climate extremes, ensuring sustainable electricity supply under a changing energy and climate landscape.