Optimal angles for harvesting solar electricity in some African cities

In recent years, the quest for renewable and sustainable energy has been extensive while solar energy has been on the vanguard of sustainable alternative and renewable energy sources due to its clean nature and cost effectiveness for most human activities such as water pumping and electric power generation, amongst others. The off beam installation of Photovoltaic (PV) modules has posed a severe challenge to the optimal functioning of these PV cells despite the abundance of solar irradiation receivable in most African cities. This paper presents the Optimal Inclination Angles (OIA) for mounting PV modules in the absences of a mechanized or automated solar tracking device, for optimum yield in solar electricity generation for some selected African cities using the Photovoltaic Geographic Information Systems (PVGIS) dataset. The OIA of the selected African cities has been identified for optimal solar irradiation exploitation and if the modules are mounted on a horizontal plane, it is expected that considerable amount of solar irradiation would not be harnessed as it has been estimated using the difference from the Irradiation on OIA (Hopt) and the Irradiation on horizontal plane (Hh), whose difference shows that the northern African cities, Algiers, Rabat and Tripoli, are seen to have high levels in unutilized solar irradiation of 780 Wh/m2, 760 Wh/m2 and 680 Wh/m2 respectively while Harare, Lusaka, Maiduguri, Khartoum, Maputo and Luanda would have considerably high levels in untapped solar irradiation of 360Wh/m2, 330 Wh/m2, 180 Wh/m2, 260 Wh/m2, 570 Wh/m2 and 80 Wh/m2 respectively if PV modules are mounted on horizontal plane. However cities such as Bangui, Abidjan and Mogadishu have quite low levels in unexploited solar irradiation of 40 Wh/m2, 70 Wh/m2 and 10 Wh/m2 respectively when PV modules are mounted on horizontal plane. These differences show the amount of solar irradiation which if adequately harnessed, adds to the solar energy potentials of the region.

► Solar PV modules are better mounted at Optimal Inclination Angles (OIA) in the absences of a mechanized or automated solar tracking device.
► This is important because of the amount of solar irradiation lost in the horizontal mounting of the solar PV modules in some African cities.
► The Optimal Inclination Angles (OIA) for these cities has been presented.