Showing papers on "Rural electrification published in 2012"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the relationship between energy access and millennium development goals, especially the connection between modern energy services and development, public health, gender empowerment, and the degradation of the natural environment.
393 citations
TL;DR: In this article, feasibility of small-scale Hydro/PV/Wind based hybrid electric supply system to the district is studied, and different system types and their component sizes are identified having a cost of energy less than $0.16/kWh.
382 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the advantages and disadvantages of using renewable energy technologies for rural electrification in developing countries were considered, and sustainability indicators were applied to three case studies in order to explore the extent to which sustainable welfare benefits can be created by renewable energy mini-grids.
199 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a cross-sectional data from a comprehensive 2005 household survey representative of both urban and rural India was used to determine if the energy poor are also income poor and whether and how energy policies help reduce energy poverty, independent of income.
197 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors applied an econometric analysis to estimate the average and distribution benefits of rural electrification using rich household survey data from India, and found that rural electricification helps to reduce time allocated to fuelwood collection by household members and increases time allocated for studying by boys and girls.
Abstract: This paper applies an econometric analysis to estimate the average and distribution benefits of rural electrification using rich household survey data from India. The results support that rural electrification helps to reduce time allocated to fuelwood collection by household members and increases time allocated to studying by boys and girls. Rural electrification also increases the labor supply of men and women, schooling of boys and girls, and household per capita income and expenditure. Electrification also helps reduce poverty. But the larger share of benefits accrues to wealthier rural households, with poorer ones having more limited use of electricity. The analysis also shows that restricted supply of electricity, due to frequent power outages, negatively affects both household electricity connection and its consumption, thereby reducing the expected benefits of rural electrification.
171 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reviewed trends in rural electrification over the past 30 years in Sub-Saharan Africa and found that the knowledge of the impact of this has only marginally improved: low connection rates and weak productive utilization identified in the 1980s remain true today and impacts on such dimensions as health, education, or income, though often used to justify projects, are largely undocumented.
Abstract: The author reviews trends in rural electrification over the past 30 years in Sub-Saharan Africa. In particular, it is shown that motivations for rural electrification programs have evolved significantly over the years, following changes in development paradigms. The author finds, that knowledge of the impact of this has only marginally improved: low connection rates and weak productive utilization identified in the 1980s remain true today, and impacts on such dimensions as health, education, or income, though often used to justify projects, are largely undocumented. Indeed impact evaluations are methodologically challenging in the field of infrastructures and have been limited thus far. Nevertheless examples of recent or ongoing impact evaluations of rural electrification programs offer promising avenues for identifying both the effect of electricity per se and the relative effectiveness of approaches to promoting it.
162 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented an analysis aimed at choosing between off-grid solar photovoltaic, biomass gasifier based power generation and conventional grid extension for remote village electrification.
148 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the role of innovations in terms of partnerships and business models to enhance energy access, especially for those living at the so-called bottom of pyramid, is discussed, and the need for new forms of public and private sector partnerships, especially the pro-poor ones that are effective in enhancing energy access is suggested.
143 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the feasibility of adding renewable energy sources to the current utility grid power supply in Sheikh Abolhassan to achieve a more economical and environmentally friendly system.
Abstract: The Binalood region in Iran enjoys an average wind speed of 6.82 m/s at 40 m elevation and an average daily solar radiation of 4.79 kWh/m2/day. Within this perspective, a remote rural village in Binalood region, called Sheikh Abolhassan, can readily be expected to have more than enough potential for its load demand to be supplied with a stand-alone hybrid renewable energy system. Yet the local state-run electrical service provider extended the utility grid to the village in 2006 to boost the already present diesel generator. This study aims, firstly, to explore how economical it would have been to keep supplying the electricity of the village by the diesel generator and add renewable energy generators to increase the renewable fraction of the system. On a second stage, we tried to investigate how renewable energy sources (RESs) can still be added to the current utility grid power supply in Sheikh Abolhassan to achieve a more economical and environmentally friendly system. The software HOMER is used in this study to evaluate the feasibility of various hybrid diesel-RES and grid-RES energy systems. Findings indicated that the addition of renewable power generators to the system both before and after the grid extension could and still can result in a more economical power system, which is obviously cleaner and more climate-benign.
142 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the economic feasibility of a PV/diesel hybrid power system (HPS) in various climatic zones within South Africa is investigated, where the authors investigate the feasibility of introducing HPSs for typical residential loads for the rural community in South Africa.
126 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the welfare impacts of household access to grid electricity after controlling for endogeneity bias were examined. And the authors found that household gain in total income due to electrification is as high as 21 percent, with a 1.5 percentage point reduction in poverty per year.
Abstract: Lack of access to electricity has been considered a major impediment to the growth and development of rural economies. Thus, the provision of electricity and other forms of modern energy has been a priority for many development organizations, including the World Bank. However, few impact studies of electrification have taken the endogeneity of the grid connection into account. Using a cross-sectional survey conducted in 2005 of 20,900 rural households in Bangladesh, this paper examines the welfare impacts of household access to grid electricity after controlling for endogeneity bias. The econometric analysis shows that grid electrification has significant positive impacts on household income, expenditure, and education. The household gain in total income due to electrification is as high as 21 percent, with a 1.5 percentage point reduction in poverty per year. The results also suggest that the income and expenditure effects of electricity connection are higher for better-off households.
TL;DR: In this paper, the challenges and social impacts of rural electrification projects using RES through a case study of a centralized off-grid solar plant in the Philippines were investigated. But the authors focused on the technical and economic aspects of the projects to properly match the social aspects to promote sustainability.
Abstract: Renewable energy systems (RESs) have been promoted for rural electrification as an answer to the growing energy needs of communities while simultaneously satisfying environmental and resource scarcity problems. These off-grid systems however have several challenges in the perspective of sustainability due to the technically and financially weak recipients and users of the projects. There is still, however, less detailed understanding how the technical and economic aspects of the projects can properly match the social aspects to promote sustainability. This paper aimed to further understand the challenges and social impacts of rural electrification projects using RES through a case study of a centralized off-grid solar plant in the Philippines. The study used multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) to identify essential user attributes which explain the users’ electricity consumption behaviors. The community cooperative had difficulties maintaining the facility in the long term due to financial and capacity related challenges. A holistic approach dealing with the technical, economic and social aspects in developing RES projects promote sustainability.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors developed and applied a global model for rural electrification and applied it to assess future trends in electrification, and the associated investment needs, and found that the trend in increasing electrification differs considerably among world regions.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors categorized the literature into four focal lenses: technology, institutional, viability and user-centric, and combined the four lenses to develop a business model framework that policy makers, practitioners and investors could use to assess RE projects or to design future rural electrification strategies.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the problems of rural electricity and its specificities in the Brazilian Amazon, and the Brazilian institutional framework that organizes the decentralized electricity generation is described with its various limitations.
Abstract: There are at least 607 thousand households in the Brazilian Amazon that need to be attended with some form of regular electricity service. These households are not attended by the electricity sector through its electricity distribution companies and most of them have some form of precarious decentralized electricity generation that is not registered or regulated in the institutional framework. Diverse initiatives were taken by Brazilian government to attend these household through alternatives that relied on locally available renewable energy. This paper accesses this initiatives of rural electrification in the Brazilian Amazon. First an overview of the problems of rural electricity are discussed and its specificities in the Brazilian Amazon. Then the Brazilian institutional framework that organizes the decentralized electricity generation is described with its various limitations. The diverse initiatives undertaken to attend the rural communities in the Amazon since the 1990s are described, as well as how these initiatives are linked to the policies for rural electrification. The results shows that it can be inferred that sole market mechanisms are not sufficient to guarantee economic sustainability of these projects. This can be one of the reasons why traditional electricity distribution companies showed the lack of interest in promoting rural electrification with other means than grid extension. The most successful projects had financed efforts to integrate the generation of electricity into local development initiatives in order to guarantee sustainability and used substantial part of funding for local mobilization and organization. It needs a paradigm chance by treating these initiatives as local development initiatives and promoting alternative ways for its implementation through partnership between local new actors in the electricity sector and government and implementing policy on a local municipal level.
TL;DR: In this paper, a stated preference study in rural Kenya using a contingent valuation method was conducted to examine the subjects' willingness to pay to connect to grid electricity and photovoltaic services and the key findings suggest that the government needs to reform the current energy subsidies, establish financial schemes and create a multilevel critical analysis of the political economy of energy systems.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined how China has achieved this feat; how China's rural energy projects were financed; and whether China provides lessons for other countries to follow, and found that unlike many other countries following the top-down approach to rural electrification, China has preferred to use a phased development through a bottom-up approach where local resources, and village level development and empowerment played an important role.
TL;DR: In this paper, the performance of the proposed hybrid system is determined on hourly basis and optimum configuration, which can meet the energy demand with minimum cost using the hybrid system design tool HOMER.
Abstract: Biomass based hybrid energy system is utilized for the electrification of villages, especially in developing countries like India. Hybrid Energy System (HES) components, feasibility study, and cost analysis are presented in this paper for a remote area Kakkavayal, a forest region in Kerala, India. A water stream at 25 m height has been identified at Kakkavayal by the Forest Department of Kerala. The village has been marked to study hourly measured meteorological and load data for a period of time. The performance of the proposed hybrid system is determined on hourly basis and optimum configuration, which can meet the energy demand with minimum cost using the hybrid system design tool HOMER. Parametric analysis indicates that with 2 kW solar PV, 15 kW pico-hydel, and 5 kW biomass gasifier generator together with five numbers of 12 V, 200 Ah of battery storage to meet the primary load demand of 56 kWh/d and 17 kWh/d (scaled annual average) of deferrable load. From the simulation, the cost of energy is found...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the cost effectiveness of centralized and decentralised distributed generation (DDG) technologies to achieve universal energy access for rural households in the South Asian region.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors assess the roles and potentials of renewable energy sources in less-developed economies while citing Nepal as an example, and find that innovative subsidies and tax incentives, adequate entrepreneurial support, strengthening institutional arrangement and promoting local community-based organizations such as the cooperatives are the necessary factors in promoting the green technologies in countries like Nepal.
Abstract: Increasing the share of renewable energy in the national energy mix remains one of the major energy policy goals across many economies. This paper assesses the roles and potentials of renewable energy sources in less-developed economies while citing Nepal as an example. Renewable energy has a significant role to play in the electrification of rural areas in developing economies and contribute towards sustainable development. Realizing full potentials of renewable, however, requires addressing both the associated demand-side and supply-side constraints. Innovative subsidies and tax incentives, adequate entrepreneurial support, strengthening institutional arrangement and promoting local community-based organizations such as the cooperatives are the necessary factors in promoting the green technologies in countries like Nepal. International factors such as large scale investment and adequate technology transfer are equally crucial to create a rapid spread and increase affordability of decentralized renewable energy technologies in less-developed economies.
01 Jan 2012
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined how China's rural energy projects were financed and whether China provides lessons for other developing countries to follow, and found that unlike many other countries following the top-down approach to rural electrification, China has preferred to use a phased development through a bottom-up approach where local resources, and village level development and empowerment played an important role.
Abstract: The economic and infrastructural disparities between the rural and urban communities of most developing countries in general and in terms of energy access in particular are quite glaring. China presents a good example of a developing country that has successfully embarked on rural electrification and energy projects over the last few decades and achieved a great feat of almost 100% electrification rate (IEA 2009). The purpose of this paper is to find out how China has achieved this feat; how China’s rural energy projects were financed and whether China provides lessons for other countries to follow. The above questions are examined through an extensive literature review and the paper finds that unlike many other countries following the top-down approach to rural electrification, China has preferred to use a phased development through a bottom-up approach where local resources, and village level development and empowerment played an important role. While the state provided the overall guidance and financial support, the integrated rural development approach has produced local-level solutions that are subsequently integrated to produce an alternative development pathway. Strong government commitment, active local participation, technological flexibility and diversity, strong emphasis on rural development through agricultural and industrial activities and an emphasis on capacity building and training have also played an important role in the success. However, despite achieving the universal access objective, China still faces a number of issues related to rural electricity use, especially in terms of regional use patterns, long-term sustainability of supply and commercial operation of the systems. The Chinese model could serve as an inspiration for other developing countries trying to ensure universal electricity access.
TL;DR: A case study in Chhattisgarh state in India has been carried out to assess what effect village electrification through solar power has had for the beneficiaries and whether technical and maintenance factors provide for the desired results set by Indian rural electrification policy as discussed by the authors.
TL;DR: In this paper, a broad-spectrum view about the energy situation in Nepal and highlights the current policies and subsidies for the optimal utilization of renewable energy resources in isolated and poor rural communities.
TL;DR: In this paper, two promising technologies are in evidence -solar home system (SHS) and an energy harvesting system (EPS) for rural electrification in the country.
TL;DR: In this paper, nine different Pico Photovoltaic systems were tested during a field study in a non-electrified village in Ethiopia and the most important perception of users were: Apart from expected benefits in health, work and education, people also notice improvements in the autonomy of children, flexibility, security, family life and the reduction of stress.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify the least-cost technologies that could be used in the rural areas of Bhutan and compare them with extending the grid to the remote areas, and compare the cost of deploying these technologies with conventional electrification through grid extension.
TL;DR: In this paper, three case studies of specific initiatives are analysed to draw out the social, economic and technical factors that could facilitate wider adoption of the technology, and the role of these intermediaries include identifying and targeting windy areas with favorable environmental conditions, conducting research and development, collecting feedback from end users, creating supply chains for new parts and materials and developing relevant knowledge and skills.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how open-source design can be utilized to catalyze rapid innovation in the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry and show how successful open design and development methods can be created and utilized by identifying business models that provide PV researchers, turnkey suppliers, and solar PV module manufacturers with the opportunity to utilize open source design principles to accelerate innovation.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated human labor requirements in rural electrification with Jatropha oil in Tanzania and showed that human energy expenditure in production of the oil is small relative to the overall energy in the system.