Complementarity of wind and solar power in North Africa: Potential for alleviating energy droughts and impacts of the North Atlantic Oscillation

摘要: With growing gas and oil prices, electricity generation based on these fossil fuels is becoming increasingly expensive. Furthermore, the vision of natural gas as a transition fuel is subject to many constraints and uncertainties of economic, environmental, and geopolitical nature. Consequently, renewable energies such as solar and wind power are expected to reach new records of installed capacity over the upcoming years. Considering the above, North Africa is one of the regions with the largest renewable resource potential globally. While extensively studied in the literature, these resources remain underutilized. Thus, to contribute to their future successful deployment and integration with the power system, this study presents a spatial and temporal analysis of the nature of solar and wind resources over North Africa from the perspective of energy droughts. Both the frequency and maximal duration of energy …