Featured Project: Solar Nano Grids, Kenya & Bangladesh

Since the first solar home system was introduced in Bangladesh in 1996, two million more have been installed throughout the nation with the help of financing from international funding bodies. It’s a similar story in Kenya (albeit on a smaller scale), where in the past two decades about 300,000 of the systems have been connected to homes.

Many of the benefits of solar energy are abundantly clear. Households with these systems can make gains in areas like health and education by, for example, cutting down on air pollution from kerosene lamps and powering lights so children and other family members can study.
But there is no such certainty around the economic benefits – there’s scant evidence that these individual systems have the power to lift people out of poverty or have any financial advantages over other ways of generating electricity, for small-scale users beyond the reach of major power grids. The individual systems are also unaffordable for many of the world’s poorest households.

It’s possible then that clusters of about 20 families in rural communities could be better off linking up to a small-scale, communal solar power system that could also be connected to an agricultural or industrial application like an irrigation system. These “nano-grid systems” could supply enough electricity for each household’s need as well as generate an income for the community, reducing the cost of energy for each family.

INTASAVE, in partnership with Loughborough University in England and United International University in Bangladesh, aims to investigate just how viable that option is for families in Bangladesh and Kenya, particularly as climate change increasingly rules out the use of fossil fuels, like oil and gas.

With funding from Britain’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the inter-disciplinary team of social scientists and engineers is investigating the social, technical and economic merits of solar nano-grids in rural communities. The researchers will compare and contrast the grid approach with household systems in Kenya and Bangladesh and draft business models for broader use across those countries.

It’s a significant project that rests on a detailed understanding of the energy uses and needs of households and communities. Is the technology cost-efficient compared with other sources? Is there an obvious advantage for members of a community to pool their interests? Is the community organized enough to manage such a system? These are just some of the questions that the team is seeking to answer.

For further information contact: admin@intasave.org