Estimating Solar Energy Potential in Eritrea: a GIS-based Approach

The remote sensing technology is suitable to analyze the potential of renewable energies such as solar energy, and play a great role to minimize global warming worldwide. However, in Eritrea, exploration of the potential of solar energy using such an advanced technique is so limited. In this work, a digital elevation model (DEM) is applied to estimate the potential of solar energy in Eritrea at a regional level for the photovoltaic system. The ArcGIS and ENVI softwares are used to compute the solar radiation from the DEM data. In addition, the global horizontal irradiation (GHI) is adopted to evaluate the suitability of the solar energy potential for the photovoltaics development. The results obtained reveal that the annual average maximum and minimum GHI of the three regions (Maekel, South, and Anseba) in the highlands and the three regions (Ghash Barka, Norther Red Sea, and Southern Red Sea) in the lowlands range between 2775 kWh/m² and 870 kWh/m2, and between 2238 kWh/m² and 830 kWh/m2, respectively. Thus the results show that Eritrea is suitable to develop the photovoltaics (PVs) electricity where the 69% and 31% part of the country is categorized as excellent suitable and highly suitable to generate the PVs power. Therefore, this research work might be significant for the decision-makers and to serve as a reference data for further studies in this area.