When more than money talks: Multi-criteria decision analysis of fuel cells for sustainable power supply in Sub-Saharan minigrids

Abstract

Strategies of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa include minigrid deployment in order to progress towards providing access to electricity to the currently 500 million people living without access in rural areas by today. While recent studies on fuel cells in such minigrid energy systems are limited to technical and economic considerations, this paper performs a multi-criteria decision analysis to compare their fit into the economic, technical, environmental, and social system against established fossil and renewable power generation technologies. Findings from scenarios which shed light on 1. strategically important criteria according to academic expert opinions captured in a survey, 2. decisive criteria for actual market penetration of power generation technologies in the respective setting and 3. future parameter and criteria in alliance with sustainable development, indicate the fuel cell to be highly suitable for rural power generation in minigrids. The major disadvantage of low economic performance of decentralized hydrogen production and usage by fuel cells in minigrids could be overcome by large-scale centralized water electrolysis. But as reliability of supply and synergies to other end-uses are promising, the authors suggest to direct future work to define economic niches and use-cases for decentralized hydrogen production in minigrids.