The Potential of Mini Grids and Critical Factors - Discussion
Comprehensive Country Ranking for Renewable Energy Based Mini-Grids Providing Rural Off-Grid Electrification
By C.Breyer - Reyer Lemoine Institut
1. The specific criteria for mini-grids has to be checked at the end locally.
2. How was the rural population caculated?
- We took into account the number of rural electrification projects per country (%) and the level of poverty (%)
3. Why were some countries that clearly have a huge electrification rate excluded? (E.g. Bangladesh)
- This was decided upon a combination of market, political environment and the weighting and scoring
4. Did you make a sensitivity analysis for each variable?
- Yes
5. How were the ability to finance the project and financial costs like company set ups and infrastructure taken into account?
- This wasNot considered because it was so extensive the investigation
- Furthermore, all the collected data is standardized and may not reflect exactly the situation in each country
Potential of Mini-grids and Critical Factors
by Dr. Teodoro Sanchez of Practical Action UK
1. How a difference between critical or important factor is done?
- First, a discussion of several specials from different areas is done in order to identify critical/important factors and finally a practical field investigation is done for verifying which of them were really critical or just important.
An Objectives Analysis for Improved Holistic Design of a Rural Electrification System
By Maizaklah Ayu Abdullah
1. How was the leader of the community approached??
- The Leaders have to know, how in other communities mini-grids are working by visiting other sites. Community has to be a very active player in the system, they should suggest energy solutions, among others
- If there is no compromise of the community the project fails very quickly
2. How is the social economy background of the communities? How are people taught to use it?
- They don’t handle money very often
- Basic education
Designing a Sustainable Model for Financial Viability of Decentralized Bio-fuel Based Power Projects
By Debajit Palit
- The water for producing biofuel is enough for biofuel based mini-grids
- Biofuel is produced by big plants and needs to be decentralized.
Further Information
energypedia Article: The Potential of Mini Grids and Critical Factors
More information can be found at Micro Perspectives for Decentralized Energy Supply Conference - 2013.