The 15 countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) face a constant shortage of energy supply, which has negative impacts on social and economic development, including also strongly the quality of life of the population. In mid 2016 the region has about 50 operational hydropower plants and about 40 sites are under construction or refurbishment. The potential for hydropower development – especially for small-scale plants – is assumed to be large, but exact data were missing in the past.
The ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (ECREEE), founded in 2010 by ECOWAS, ADA, AECID and UNIDO, responded to these challenges and developed the ECOWAS Small- Scale Hydropower Program, which was approved by ECOWAS Energy Ministers in 2012. In the frame of this program ECREEE assigned Pöyry Energy GmbH in 2015 for implementation of a hydropower resource mapping by use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for 14 ECOWAS member countries (excluding Cabo Verde). The main deliverable of the project is a complete and comprehensive assessment of the hydro resources and computation of hydropower potentials as well as possible climate change impacts for West Africa.
Main deliverables of the GIS mapping include:
• River network layer: GIS line layer showing the river network for about 500,000 river reaches with attributes including river name (if available), theoretical hydropower potential, elevation at start and end of reach, mean annual discharge, mean monthly discharge, etc.
• Sub-catchment layer: GIS polygon layer showing about 1000 sub-catchments with a size of roughly 3000 km². This layer summarizes the data of all river reaches located within the subcatchment. Hydropower plants are investments with a lifetime of several decades. Therefore, possible impacts of climate change on future discharge were incorporated into the river network and sub-catchment GIS layers. The GIS layers are available in the ECREEE Observatory for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (www.ecowrex.org).
This report summarizes the results of the GIS layers for Senegal and includes:
• General information
• Climate
• Hydrology
• Hydropower potential
• Climate change
