Mini-grids offer a quick route to electrification in parts of the world where grid extensions are unfeasible. Baptiste Possémé, senior consultant at renewable energy market research and consultancy firm Infinergia, looks at the some of the technological and regulatory trends influencing the deployment of mini-grids in Africa and Asia. This article first appeared in Volume 22 of Solar Media’s quarterly journal, PV Tech Power.
Strong developments have been seen in recent years in terms of global access to electricity as 800 million people gained access to electricity since 2010. However, 860 million people still lack access to electricity at the end of 2018 [1]. And 98% of them live in Africa and Asia.
Three main solutions exist to provide sustainable power to those populations: grid extension, solar home systems and mini-grids. The economical choice between those solutions is mainly a matter of distance to the grid, density of population and level of service.
Grid extension is the most classical answer but has several issues. It can be extremely expensive for remote communities and doesn’t necessarily offer a good quality of service (case of “bad-grid”).
Individual electricity generation systems such as solar lamps or solar home systems (SHS) are a very efficient way of providing a basic quality of service to regions with a low population density. SHS manufacturers and distributors such as BBOXX, Mobisol, Fenix International, Total or Schneider Electric have experienced a significant growth over the last years. However, those solutions usually power low power appliances and are usually used as transitional solutions.
Mini-grids, local and isolated networks, have started to gain momentum in the last five to 10 years. They can offer a lower cost than solar home systems in cases where population is dense enough and a similar quality of service than grid extension.
At Infinergia, we focused on 31 African and Asian countries where mini-grids are relevant for regulatory, historic or economic reasons. We also analysed the upstream mini-grid industry (component manufacturers and integrators), the regulatory frameworks of those countries and the associated projects.
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