Meg HarperOver the past year, SERC has been collaborating on the Renewable Energy Mini-Grids for Improved Energy Access project with researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at University of California at Berkeley, Prayas Energy Group and Palang Thai. These efforts are in support of the Global Lighting and Energy Access Partnership (Global LEAP) initiative associated with the Clean Energy Ministerial.
Renewable energy-based mini-grids offer a significant opportunity to increase access to reliable electricity services for rural populations throughout the developing world. A mini-grid is a village-scale electrical distribution system served by an isolated generator of up to a few hundred kW in capacity. Power on these grids is often provided by diesel generators, but can be supplied by local, renewable resources such as microhydro, solar, biomass or wind. Mini-grids offer an intermediate solution between stand-alone individual home power systems and main grid connection, and often prove to be more cost-effective and beneficial to the community than either of those alternatives.
Our team recently produced three documents to help inform delegates participating in the Mini-Grid Development roundtable discussion at the fourth Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM4) in New Delhi in April. CEM4 brought together energy ministers from 23 of the world’s leading economies, along with business leaders, NGOs and academia to discuss policies, technologies, investment, and skills needed to achieve the CEM’s goal of “accelerating the transition to a global clean energy economy.” Our team’s contributions included:
- Sustainable Development of Renewable Energy Mini-Grids for Energy Access: A Framework for Policy Design, which provides a review and critique of mini-grid policies from several countries and offers recommendations for national policy design to support the development of mini-grids.
- A Guidebook on Grid Interconnection and Islanded Operation of Mini-Grid Power Systems Up to 200 kW, which is intended to help meet the widespread need for guidance, standards, and procedures for interconnecting mini-grids with the central electric grid as rural electrification advances in developing countries.
- Review of Strategies and Technologies for Demand-Side Management on Isolated Mini-Grids, which discusses different measures available to help with load management on isolated mini-grids.
These documents are available on the SERC website at www.schatzlab.org/projects/developingworld/minigrids.html.
