Lighting the World: the first application of an open source, spatial electrification tool (OnSSET) on Sub-Saharan Africa

By Dimitrios Mentis, M. Howells, Holger Rogner, Alexandros Korkovelos, C. Arderne, Eduardo Zepeda, S. Siyal, Costantinos Taliotis, Morgan D. Bazilian, Ad de Roo and 3 more. 2017

217 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Agenda 2030, which comprises a set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) defined by 169 targets. ‘Ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all by 2030’ is the seventh goal (SDG7). While access to energy refers to more than electricity, the latter is the central focus of this work. According to the World Bank’s 2015 Global Tracking Framework, roughly 15% of the world’s population (or 1.1 billion people) lack access to electricity, and many more rely on poor quality electricity services. The majority of those without access (87%) reside in rural areas. This paper presents results of a geographic information systems approach coupled with open access data. We present least-cost electrification strategies on a country-by-country basis for Sub-Saharan Africa. The electrification options include grid extension, mini-grid and stand-alone systems for rural, peri-urban, and urban contexts across the economy. At low levels of electricity demand there is a strong penetration of standalone technologies. However, higher electricity demand levels move the favourable electrification option from stand-alone systems to mini grid and to grid extensions.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Information Systems, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/db04d67940661cca4eb78628a0254824084758c3

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Citations in the corpus

Rural electrification through mini-grids: Challenges ahead (2019, methodology): “Recently, electrification planning tools such as spatially explicit GIS based models (see Mentis et al. 2017; Moner Girona et al. 2016; Parshall et al. 2009; Sanoh et al. 2012) and Network Planner software (see Kemausuor 2014; Ohiare 2015) have been designed for and applied to different countries…”
Electrification of Sub-Saharan Africa through PV/hybrid mini-grids: Reducing the gap between current business models and on-site experience (2018, background): “[36] have published on decentralised energy planning models in Africa, but have not focused on authenticated field costs of PV/hybrid mini-grid.”
A cost optimal resolution for Sub-Saharan Africa powered by 100% renewables in 2030 (2018, background): “Another study on electrification planning in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030 [65] indicates that 850 million people (77%), 180 million people (16%) and 70 million people (6%) can be electrified by grid extensions, mini-grids and standalone systems in 2030, respectively, based on Tier 5 electrification cr”