Combine that with the development banks' interest in mini-grids and suddenly the future is looking brighter.
"There is a big focus by the Asia Development Bank on mini-grids and the Islamic Development Bank; all the development banks are looking at this as a very interesting, scalable opportunity for them to put their money to work".
The result, according to the report (pdf) from the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), is major bottlenecks in funding for many small-scale renewable energy services such as solar home systems, mini-grids and clean cooking facilities.
This solution can be implemented in single family homes and in renewable energy mini-grids, and as well as in whole cities.
As people move up the energy ladder to higher levels of access, policymakers should transition deployment support to full access technologies like mini-grids and larger solar home systems.
The picture shows a diversified electrification technology base where the lower household bins range of 0 to 25,000 is wholly off-grid, LGAs with population of 25,001 to 50,000 are fairly diversified in terms of technology choice (off-grid, grid and mini-grid), and the upper households have more of grid and mini-grid.
The innovation happening in this market is incredible from pay as you go systems to wireless mini grids.
Shell Foundation has been a strategic partner to Husk Power Systems since 2008 and have been deploying smart subsidy in the form of grant coupled with skills support to help address these issues, but far more work needs to be done with them and other mini grid operators.
Experimental results on the prototype 5 kVA mini-grid inverter and reverse osmosis desalination plant, rated at 5.5 kWh/day, are also presented here to verify the idea of providing power and water supplies to remote areas.
Related enabling technologies also need to be further developed, such as low cost smart meters that might allow mini grid operators to serve larger institutional customers like telecom base stations as well as their surrounding communities.
