Towards Renewable Energy Resources Interconnectivity for Optimal Energy Access in the West African Power Pool

One of the main goals of the interconnections in the West African Power Pool is to share energy resources. With the abundance of solar and wind renewable resources in the demographic, integrating these energy resources to be shared across West Africa is a viable solution to boost economic activities, energy access, electricity trading and reduce emissions. In this work, an overview of the agencies to enable the adoption of renewable energy in the region is presented. Also, a brief review of works that considered including renewable energy sources in the energy mix has been done. Low energy access is still an issue in the region and to overcome this both off-grid and grid-connected renewable resources have to be considered. Due to the intermittent nature of variable renewable resources, sharing these grid-connected resources within this region is important. Also, proper regulation and utilization of the regional electricity market can facilitate their deployment. This paper highlighted the prospects of renewable energy in the West African Power Pool.