IMPACTS ASSESSMENT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON SOLAR PV SYSTEMS IN NIGER’S DOSSO REGION

Abstract

As the climate of the world warms, the consumption of energy in climate-sensitive sectors is likely to change. Possible targets include (1) decreases in the amount of energy consumed in residential, commercial, and industrial buildings for space heating and cooling; (2) decreases in energy used directly in certain processes such as residential, commercial, and industrial water heating, residential and commercial refrigeration and industrial process cooling; (3) increases in energy used to supply other resources for climate-sensitive processes, such as pumping water for irrigated agriculture and municipal uses, etc. The mitigation plans for ambitious climate change call for a significant increase in the use of renewable energies, which requires the development of supply systems in terms of life and resistance to climate change vulnerabilities. Renewable energy plays a key role in future low-carbon-emission plans that should contribute to the limiting global warming. However, its dependence on climate conditions makes it also very susceptible to the climate change. While the first part of this ‘paradox’ has been thoroughly studied, the international scientific community has only recently started to investigate the impacts that global climate change may have on energy, in general, and renewable energy, specifically (Dajuma, A. and al. 2016). From the literature, some findings indicate that the alteration of solar PV supply by the end of this century compared with the estimations made under current climate conditions should be in the range (- 14%; + 2%) (Sonia Jerez, and al., 2015). Whereas solar systems have been promoted largely as a mitigation measure to energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, they are also an important component in the climate change adaptation agenda in some countries such as Niger. However, solar systems are themselves exposed to changing climatic conditions which may affect their effective performance. Therefore, to ensure the proper functionality of solar systems, long-term climate change conditions and their potential impacts on solar system performance must be taken into account during the sizing phase. It is for this reason that as far as Dosso region is concerned in this work, we have assessed the impacts of future climate change on solar energy production using the appropriate tools and existing climate models. The results show a negative impact of climate change on the Dosso solar system, due to the increase (or decrease), over time, of some variables playing a very important role in the quantification and production of solar energy, in particular the solar radiation and other meteorological parameters such as Near air surface temperature and wind speed.