Tania Urmee

Success and Sustainability Criteria and Issues for SHS Programmes

Solar home systems (SHSs) have been increasingly seen to be and promoted by many as the best solution for providing access to electricity in remote and rural areas of developing countries where supplying electricity from the grid is not a practical option. To date, many SHS programmes had been implemented in developing countries. The evidence that exists suggests that many of these SHS programmes have indeed met with limited success. Improving the effectiveness of these programmes will be important for obtaining increased political and bureaucratic support for investment in future SHS programmes. Finding ways for these programmes to achieve greater success will require a better understanding of the factors that contribute to the success of some programmes and those factors that contribute to a relative lack of success of others. This information will be needed to inform the development and implementation of future programmes. This chapter describes a model for evaluating programme success that uses a number of success criteria and indicators that can be used to measure programme success.

Design and fabrication of low cost solar water heaters

We designed two types of very low cost solar water heaters which do not need a water supply connection. The first one consisted of two plastic bowls, one inside the other with 5 cm thickness of insulation in between. A transparent plastic cover was tied around the smaller vessel. It was found that water placed inside the smaller vessel had its temperature raised by 18°C from the ambient temperature within four hours when the average insolation was about 600 kWh/m2. The second one consisted of two earthen vessels in place of plastic bowls. The water temperature rise was 20°C under the same radiation. If either of the heaters was covered with cotton-wool insulation in the afternoon, the temperature remains 13°C above the ambient early next morning. The cost of the material was around US

Development of Energy Service Company (ESCO) Market to Promote Energy Efficiency Programmes in Developing Countries

4.50 for the plastic bowl heater while this is around US

A comparative analysis of built environment and open terrain wind data by higher order statistics and performance evaluation of 5 kW HAWT using FAST

3.50 for the earthen vessel water heater.

Framework for Successful Implementation of SHS Programme

Around 80% of the world’s economic growth projected from 2004 to 2030 will be contributed by non-OECD (Ellis, Energy service companies in developing countries: Potential and practice. International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD, 2009).); energy service companies (ESCOs) can play a vital role in improving energy efficiency in developing countries. ESCO can help energy users, customers, companies, industries and commercial sectors to improve an efficiency of equipment by providing energy service (energy performance and/or credit risk). ESCO was implemented quite successfully to promote energy efficiency (EE) in majority of the European Union (EU) and developed countries such as the USA, Canada and Japan but not in many developing countries. This raised the question, what are the potential barriers of using ESCO for EE programmes in developing countries? It is, therefore, crucial to understand the ESCO approach in different countries to find lessons learned and best practices. The policy for implementing ESCO varied in different countries depends on many factors such as the culture, the acceptance of EE and also the level of EE development. Although the same policy of ESCO can be implemented in several countries, the result could be different. This research will provide a comprehensive overview of the success and barriers to implementing ESCO programmes for energy efficiency in the developing countries. The lessons learned from this will summarize with the recommendation to develop ESCO implementation in developing countries.

Solar Home Systems—A Description of the Technology and Its Applications

Small wind turbines (SWT) that are designed as per the IEC 61400-2 standard suffer structural and operational complexities when operating in the built environment, because such environments impose stochastic variations in wind speed and turbulence. The wind conditions in flat terrain of Ostergarnsholm (OG) Island, Sweden and built environment of Port Kennedy (PK), Australia are compared for turbulence intensity (TI) and intermittency. The TI of the PK wind field was 24% at mean wind speed of 15 m/s, which was higher than the Normal Turbulence Model (NTM) indicated in IEC 61400-2. The TI in the open terrain was below 18% for all mean wind speeds. Similarly, for three chosen wind speed bins within a SWTs operating range, the urban wind field had higher intermittency for smaller timescales but resulted in smaller intermittency as the time lag increased. The effect of these measured wind fields on the performance and loading of a turbine was studied at the three chosen wind speed bins using an aeroelastic model of a 5 kW SWT that was developed in FAST. The predicted output statistics using measured wind fields were compared with the assumed wind fields in the IEC 61400-2 standard. The rotor thrust and blade flapwise bending moment with PK wind data were higher than that of the IEC standard due to the increased turbulence in the inflowing wind indicating the inadequacy in the current wind standard applied for such SWTs for urban installations.

Choosing the Right Path

The solar electrification programme success is assessed on the basis of the degree to which they meet their objectives, and this in turn is determined by multiple factors. Careful consideration of the success factors during programme design and their incorporation into a programme will not guarantee that all of the programme’s objectives are fully achieved, but the omission of any of the factors would significantly put the programme’s sustainability at risk. These success factors and the roles of the various stakeholders can be combined to develop a sustainability road map for a SHS programme. The aim of this road map is to provide programme implementers, private sector players, policy makers and funding agencies with an implementation pathway that can be followed in designing, implementing and evaluating SHS projects for remote and rural communities using relevant information. It has a strong focus on project planning, management, implementation and evaluation and is not a technical teaching guide.

Overview of Financing Mechanisms for Solar Home Systems in Developing Countries

The concept behind the design of a renewable energy supply system is the technical, economic, social and ecological optimisation of the various components—the renewable energy generator, the energy storage unit, as well as the operating philosophy, which involves the energy management system, load shedding, dumping of generated energy and conventional generator backup. In this section, stand-alone photovoltaic systems for rural electrification are presented from a technical point of view with a focus on solar home systems. The knowledge on the components and the overall system enables the above design of solar home systems.

Performance testing of lead acid batteries as a function of depth of discharge and temperature in photovoltaic application in rural Bangladesh

Some SHS programmes that had been or were being delivered in rural and remote areas in developing countries were more successful than others. A large number of SHS programs and other types of renewable energy programmes and projects implemented in developing countries over the past two decades had been relatively unsuccessful from even the perspectives of those implementing the projects. This raised two burning questions: why these programmes had been less successful than their implementers had hoped and how could they have been designed and implemented in ways that would have made them more successful. A better understanding of the causes behind the failures of limited success of many of these programmes and, conversely, the relative success of others is needed. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature we then went on to undertake our own SHS programme case study reviews and surveys, and thirdly interviewed SHS programme designers and implementers. These strategies were used to gather and to pull together sufficient data and information to be able to understand the full suite of relevant factors that can have an influence on the outcome of a SHS programme, and to understand what works and what does not work, and why. The result of this work is the comprehensive set of issues that need to be considered in each of the steps that are essential to the design and implementation of a successful SHS programme, which are described in detail in the previous chapter. This chapter explains that a road map is not a complete solution but a guideline to develop such projects. There are some complex issues that programme planners, designers and implementers are going to have to grapple with that a road map cannot be used to make those decisions or judgments, but can be used to help inform those decisions.

Issues related to rural electrification using renewable energy in developing countries of Asia and Pacific

Solar Home Systems (SHSs) are used as the household’s source of electricity primarily by rural households in remote villages in areas in developing countries in which the national or regional electricity grid has not been built. Like all renewable energy conversion systems, initial capital cost of a solar home system represents a high proportion of the system’s total life-cycle cost. This makes the system unattractive for providing electricity access to rural areas by the national or regional electric utilities. Those living in such areas tend to be the poorest of the poor with very low incomes and without the ability to pay the upfront costs of a SHS. An important prerequisite for a rural PV electrification programme in developing countries is the mobilisation of the financial means required for the acquisition of the systems. Local banks and finance institutions tend to categorise SHSs as a high risk investment, and therefore, showing lack of interest in providing finance for SHSs means that other financial mechanisms are required. Different types of financing schemes available and used in different SHS programmes around the world are presented in this chapter.