Complementarity between Solar and wind Energy Potentials in Benin Republic

Abstract

This paper presents a study to show the complementarity between solar and wind energy potentials in Benin Republic. Daily wind speed data in the coast of Cotonou city, precisely in Cadjehoun district, has been used to assess wind energy potential. Solar potential is evaluated using spatio temporal daily solar radiation data covering the country. In this research, we have found the locations offering optimal complementarity between solar and wind energy. The complementarity is measured with Pearson correlation coefficient, which is used as objective function to be minimized. The optimization method used is Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), which has been implemented in Matlab®. We showed that an optimal complementarity is obtained between the coast of Cotonou in the ‘Littoral’ department and the central part of the country in the ‘Collines’ department.