Renewable energy projects to electrify rural communities in Cape Verde

Even though Cape Verde has high wind and solar energy resources, the conventional strategy for increasing access to electricity in isolated rural areas is by centralized microgrids with diesel generators. In this study, the design of 2 off-grid electrification projects based on hybrid windphotovoltaic systems in Cape Verde is developed and analyzed. First a detailed wind resource assessment is carried out utilizing meso-scale wind atlas data combined with a specialized microscale wind flow model. Then a mathematical model is used for the design of off-grid projects considering a combination of individual systems and microgrids. Various design configurations are analyzed and compared. The proposed configurations exploit the highest wind potential areas and are economically beneficial in comparison with diesel generator systems.