Against the Odds: The Potential of Swarm Electrification for Small Island Development States

Koepke, Mathias; Groh, Sebastian

doi:10.1016/j.egypro.2016.11.300

Cited by 18 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…There are other ways to get rural households up the energy ladder ahead of expansion of the national grid, and ahead of alternative major infrastructure investments in mini-grids. One approach is so-called "swarm electrification", to connect a number of SHS units across a community, which will act to smooth the total electricity demand through diversity effects and share the generation capacity from all individual systems [47], as a sort of 'micro-grid'. This bottom-up approach to electrification eliminates the typical oversizing in the design of mini-grids and grid extension projects while enabling households to transition to a higher energy access tier using their legacy SHS [44,47].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Energy Lock-In Effect of Solar Home Systems: A Case Study in Rural Nigeria

2020

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Ongoing reductions in the costs of solar PV and battery technologies have contributed to an increased use of home energy systems in Sub-Saharan African regions without grid access. However, such systems can normally support only low-power end uses, and there has been little research regarding the impact on households unable to transition to higher-wattage energy services in the continued absence of the grid. This paper examines the challenges facing rural energy transitions and whether households feel they are energy ‘locked in’. A mixed-methods approach using questionnaire-based household energy surveys of rural solar home system (SHS) users was used to collect qualitative and quantitative data. Thematic analysis and a mixture of descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were applied. The results showed that a significant number of households possessed appliances that could not be powered by their SHS and were willing to spend large sums to connect were a higher-capacity option available. This implied that a significant number of the households were locked into a low-energy future. Swarm electrification technology and energy efficient, DC-powered plug-and-play appliances were suggested as means to move the households to higher tiers of electricity access.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Energy Lock-In Effect of Solar Home Systems: A Case Study in Rural Nigeria

2020

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“…Examples for such developments are systems combining solar PV, batteries, and television systems in Tanzania and Kenya, which use mobile tariff apps for pricing, allowing users to pay for their electricity [6]. Another example is in Bangladesh, where by using a swarm electrification method, it has been possible to implement solar PV and batteries to low-income villages [7]. The basic idea is to set up a local economy in a small village.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Off-Grid Houses in the Energy Transition with a Case Study in the Netherlands

Pulido

Kortenaar²,

Hurink

et al. 2019

Energies

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Off-grid houses can be considered an important concept to increase the access to electricity throughout the world. Although there are quite some initiatives in place to improve the access to electricity, the implementation rate of practical solutions is far below the UN Sustainable Development Goal 7: Energy (SDG 7) + for 2030. This situation is most apparent in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the current trends of electricity access calculated by the World Bank indicate that this region will not be able to achieve the SDG 7 target. Another worldwide trend which may help to increase electricity access is that currently, a lot of renewable energy generation is realized locally in houses (especially Solar Photovoltaics (PV)). This paper reviews the recent developments to increase the access to electricity in the world and the implementation of off-grid houses in different scenarios. The focus here is on the different efforts to create off-grid houses considering their challenges on a macro and micro level. Moreover, potential research directions for technologies in off-grid houses are presented in more detail. For this, a case description of a possible off-grid house in the Netherlands is presented together with some initial simulations results for this case using solar PV, the Sea-Salt battery, and a Glycerol Fuel Cell. The simulations use the DEMkit software and the analysis is performed using measured house load data for a period in winter and in summer.

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“…Sigrist et al [10], Zhang et al [11], Obi et al [12], Dufo-López et al [13], Kwon et al [14], and Szabó et al [15] analyzed technically and economically the renewable energy integration including the energy storage system. Other studies have been developed with an emphasis in technical analysis for the renewable electricity integration, as can be seen in the work of Adefarati and Basal [16], Wijayatunga et al [17] in Maldives Islands, Koepke and Groh [18] in Bangladesh, and Sheng et al [19]. In this last work, the marine current turbine works together with ocean compressed energy storage.…”

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confidence: 99%