Spatio-Temporal Projection of Electricity Demand for Previously Un-Electrified Populations

Abstract

Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa face a twofold challenge of achieving universal electricity access and transitioning to a climate-neutral energy sector. Electrification and energy transition modelling for such countries require a high spatio-temporal resolution to capture dispersed populations and enable the assessment of off-grid vs on-grid solutions. This study presents a novel method to disaggregate country-scale socioeconomic indicators and project them under various development scenarios. Based on these disaggregated projections, the residential electricity demand is estimated for all populated cells, including currently un-electrified ones. The resulting high-resolution geospatial datasets serve as a critical input to electrification and energy system modelling tools and can greatly enhance their accuracy compared to country-wide single-point static estimates. Namibia has been used here as an illustrative case study.