Climate Impacts on Hydropower Availability and Electricity Reliability in Malawi

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Frye, Audrey
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program - Environmental Science

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Energy access is regarded as the “heart of development,” but access is only one component of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7, a call to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all. Without reliability, energy access is not able to maximize the benefits of its users, creating a lag in social and economic development. Malawi has notably suffered these effects, and because of its nearly 100% dependence on hydropower for electricity generation, reliability will decrease as climate impacts such as flood and drought continue to impact hydropower generation. As a result, frequent blackouts, brownouts, and load shedding will continue to occur. Through historical capacity factor analysis of daily hydropower generation from 2012-2018 and use of household survey data, we found that hydropower variability increased over the time period. Supplemental household survey responses confirm that blackouts increasingly occurred up to "several times a week." Through this analysis, it is possible to explore whether microgrids or other electricity diversifying solutions may provide more resilient future buffers from hydrologic variability due to climate change.

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Kittner, Noah
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Environment, Ecology, and Energy Program - Environmental Science

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