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Rural Electrification

• Objective of the lecture

To give general over view of rural
electrification focusing on
developing country
To clarify the challenge and benefit
of rural electrification in developing
country
 learning out come

After completing this lecture you will be able to;

• Define what mean rural electrification
• Appreciate contribution of electricity for development
• Elaborate use of electricity in rural area
• Identify challenges in providing rural electrification
• explain policy , regulatory and institutional set up required
for successful Rural electrification
• Explain some issue to be addressed in rural electrification
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Rural electrification
• Defn. the process by which access to electricity is
provided to households or villages located in the
isolated or remote areas of a country
• Electrification is a must to foster development
• Today 1.6 billion people worldwide do not have
access to electricity
• The International Energy Agency estimates that
roughly 85% of the people without electricity live
in rural areas in developing countries
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Rural electrification
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Subsidies
subsidy sources for rural electrification 7

program
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Benefit of rural electrification
• Generation of jobs can be building/operating facilities,
new possible activities/business, time saved from
gathering sources of energy.
• Increase income is expected to come from
new/additional jobs that may arise.
• Improve health which will include the conservation of
medicaments and food, food preparation /cooking
• induce self-reliance where the people have time for
education and basically have an attractive living
environment
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Benefit of rural electrification
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Benefit of electrification
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Benefit of electrification
• Social benefits of electrification
• Economic benefits of electrification
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Use of electricity in rural areas
• Enhance education by allowing for study beyond
daylight hours, introducing better learning conditions
such as computer facilities, internet and distance
learning if there is a lack of teachers.
• Reduce isolation and marginalisation by the
improvement of communication and information
channels such us telephones, TV, cinema, radio and
computers.
• Safety measures can be implemented, such as street
lighting, security lighting, remote alarm systems, electric
fences, road signs, railway crossing and signals,
warning lights, etc.
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Use of electricity in rural areas
• Improve healthcare by providing drinking water and
lighting for rural clinics where vaccines could be
conserved, blood storage refrigerators could be installed,
operations could be carried out with sterilisation
measures, diseases could be prevented, x-rays could be
used and pregnancies could be monitored by ultra-sound
scans.
• Prevent natural disasters by giving the possibility of
installing radio communication facilities, enabling remote
weather measuring, data acquisition and transmission
(for example, river levels and seismographs) earthquake
monitoring systems, emergency power for disaster relief,
etc
• Foster productivity, since electricity also allows for
irrigation, crop processing, food preservation, water
 Challenges in providing rural 14

electrification to remote locations

• Remotness of the location
• Lack of finance
• Unprofitability of the sector , grid extension per
km at between $8,000 and $10,000, rising to
around $22,000 in difficult rural terrains
• Grid extension is not feasible maybe off grid
electrification
• Poverty llinked with willingness to pay
• Political Challenges
Challenges to provide electricity with 15

off grid solution

• Technology . Previously the téchnology is one of
the problem now the cost and awarness
• Financial - expensive initial cost
• Institutional: Once the technological and financial
constraints were solved, and both technology and
required funds became more accessible, the next
challenge was institutional. The failure of most of
the projects implemented during current times
demonstrated the need to define an institutional
structure that could ensure the long term
sustainability of the service
 Rural electrification policy , 16

regulatory and institutional set up

• Rural electrification programs require a number of
conditions in the institutional environment to
ensure successful and sustainable program
expansion
• Due to the specific challenges posed by low
population density, low energy demand, and
undeveloped rural economies, these programs
require special financing conditions, design and
construction standards specifically formulated to
address rural power-supply characteristic
• In general, the lower the population density per kilometer
of distribution line, the more challenging it is to achieve
financial returns for electric service providers.
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Policy implication
• Well-designed electrification programs contribute
significantly to rural economic development, but
only if the resulting electric service is reliable,
affordable, and accessible to a significant
proportion of the communities served.
• Ensuring that infrastructure costs are reasonable
has a direct impact on not only the affordability of
electric service, but also on the potential impact of
the program in terms of cost per household or
business served
• Given the potential economic benefits of affordable and
reliable electric service, long-term institutional and
financial sustainability is essential.
 A focus on government policies for 18

rural electrification
• Most developing countries include rural
electrification policies in their socio-political
development efforts to level out rural/urban
disparities.
• In doing so the geverment set regulations, market
incentives, technical standards etc
• The appropriate policies and priorities for addressing
energy poverty will vary depending on country
context , including socio-economic circumstances
and energy mix.
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Continued..
• Policy makers are trying to balance the demands
of three broad objectives in the energy sector;
1. energy security to ensure economic stability and
growth;
2. reducing energy poverty, by ensuring access to
electricity and clean-combusting fuels and
equipment for the poor; and
3. managing greenhouse gas emissions from energy.
 Issue to be addressed in rural 20

electrification
• Financial issues:
– Rural electrification is often not a profitable business
– Inadequate tariffs
– The investment capacity of the national utilities is often
limited due to a combination of factors: inadequate
tariffs , low levels of revenue collection (commercial
losses), technical losses, inefficiency and obsolescence
of the power systems due to inadequate maintenance,
low level of consumption
– Lack of financing schemes banks are not interest to
give loans for rural electrification project which has
low investment return rate and high risk with long
paying time
 Issue to be addressed in rural 21

electrification
• Governance issues:
– Insufficient attention to rural electrification in the
country's regulatory framework. Suitable (light handed)
regulation, for small electricity distributors are often
not at hand.
– - Inadequate coordination between the national utility
and the rural electrification agency/fund.
– Weak planning and organizational capacity of the
public authority
– Low capacity of local authorities
 Issue to be addressed in rural 22

electrification
• Technical issue
– Improving the capacity of private local actors in
various technical matters, notably for decentralized
electrification solutions
– Support to the development of new management
modalities (including the use of prepaid metering, block
metering, fixed monthly rates for restricted supplies,
etc…)
– Provision of technical education adapted to new
technologies
– Training of qualified staff in the utilities
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Technologies commonly used in rural
electrification
• The choice of a specific energy technology for
rural electrification naturally depends on the
targeted country and on whether it is a whole
region, community, business, farm or household
that is to benefit from the process
– Issues of customer and load density, relative distance to
the national or regional grid, landscape, availability of
natural resources such as wind, sun, water, forests,
economic and financial aspects, availability and
maturity of any chosen technology, all these factors
influence the decision maker in his choice of the
technology or technology mix
Technologies commonly used in rural 24
electrification
– Depending in part on the degree of urbanization of the
targeted population, energy technologies used in
electrification programmes generally involve national
or regional grid extension, diesel generators, disposable
batteries, kerosene lamps, renewable energies
(including photovoltaic systems, wind energy,
hydropower, hybrid systems)
• National grid extension
• Conventional system (diesel generator)
• Stand alone Renewable energy systems
• Hybrid systems
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Continued
• Generally the technology options are determined
after assessing ;
– Demographic information; how many people, where do
they live, and how densely?
– Socioeconomic information; type of activity,
industry/enterprise
– What infrastructure is there? Roads, railroads,
airport, distance to electric grid
– The number of potential customers willing to pay for
the electricity service
– Availability of natural resources such as wind, sun,
water, forests, economic and financial aspects,
availability and maturity of any chosen technology
. A decision tree off the grid Vs Grid 26

electrification
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Status of Africa’s Energy Sector
• Africa’s energy sector is best understood as three
distinct regions. North Africa, which is heavily
dependent on oil and gas, South Africa, which
depends on coal and the rest of Sub-Saharan
Africa, which is largely reliant on biomass
• The power utilities in Africa have failed to provide
adequate levels of electricity services to the
majority of the region's population, especially to
rural communities and the urban poor .
– Provision of electricity is largely confined to the
privileged urban middle and upper income groups as
well as the formal commercial and industrial sub-
sector. Excluding South Africa, per capita consumption of electricity falls from 431kWh to 112kWh.
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Biomass energy consumption sub Sahara Africa
Primary energy supply by region and 29

source
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Urban vs rural electrification
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Electric system loss in sub Sahara 32

Africa
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Rural energy delivery mechanisms