How is electricity provided in remote locations

To ensure public access to electricity in areas that are remote, outermost, and lagging 3T , both the government and public sectors are necessary in providing affordable energy sources. PT Surya Utama Nuansa SUN , as a project developer for solar energy system in Indonesia, contributed to the success of electricity supply to 2, houses in 6 provinces.

The SHS technology was designed by SUN and can be easily applied by anyone, anywhere, and anytime that the public can experience the benefits of clean energy electricity that improves the economical standards of living.

At the household scale, the SHS technology works using solar power stored in a battery. The amount of power generated from the SHS technology is able to turn on the television, radio, fan, and lights.

Rural infrastructure development and poverty reduction projects require strong capacity building, and building institutional capacity and enhancing coordination can be a slow process, especially when, as in Mexico, many government agencies and stakeholders have legal mandates to participate in planning, decision making, financing, and executing rural development projects.

In supporting this initiative, the World Bank leveraged its extensive experience in rural electrification and renewable energy to promote relevant international best practices, thereby further supporting poverty reduction efforts in Mexico. A subsequent restructuring of the project to address initial delays in implementation revised the project scope to focus on one photovoltaic technology: mini-grids based on centralized solar farms CSFs. CSFs provide a sound, reliable, utility-like electricity supply with much larger capacity per connection than home-system solar units; this ability to deliver greater electricity benefits per household renders CSFs particularly suited to supplying power to small, isolated communities.

Because CSFs are considered a renewable energy source, any negative impact and CO2 emissions from the installation are projected to be lower than would result from traditional energy sources.

Through the strategies and actions initiated and supervised by SENER, and with Bank support, rural electrification and renewable energy were widely extended using international best practices and environmental sensitivity, thereby further reducing poverty and extending opportunity in previously struggling communities. PSIE successfully installed CSFs and related infrastructure to supply electricity to the targeted remote communities, including these specific results:.

In addition, access to efficient and sustainable energy services is expected to lead to a better quality of life for the benefited residents.

Thus far, important social and economic benefits achieved have included:. Internet access is expected to provide the greatest impact, however, with major benefits including:.

This installation is expected both to foster sustainable use of resources and to create employment opportunities. The project was designed to provide electricity to households, businesses, and public facilities in rural areas with predominantly indigenous populations. By project closing, 2, households in eight Mexican states had benefited from this operation. Individuals affected by the project were very appreciative.

The refrigerator because before, the food spoiled. Imagine that they had to make food just for the day, and the times that there were leftovers, they spoiled. All the people are very happy. Imagine that [we can use] washing machines, irons, well everything that is essential. Even the most remote and undeveloped areas typically still have a heat source used for cooking and providing warmth for survival. Whether this is a wood fire, kerosene stove or other source of heat, there is inevitably a considerable amount of waste heat.

This waste heat can be used to generate a small amount of power with off-the-shelf thermoelectric modules. This may be sufficient to charge a mobile device or lamp, but without considerable developments in thermoelectric technology, the scale is likely to remain largely insufficient.

In addition, usual materials used for thermoelectric modules such as lead, tellurium and bismuth are toxic. Usually at low voltage and low power, these systems are safe, and do not require massive capital investment. All of these methods provide enormous economic benefits to the end-users, compared with the lack of access to electricity or cost of battery power alone.

For larger scale power generation and distribution, the basic generation strategies, like those mentioned in the above section, must be scaled up and synchronized.

The infrastructure required to do this is referred to as a micro-grid. Micro grids are typically designed to be capable of providing continuous power supporting the same levels of demand as a full scale electrical grid.

Unlike off-grid generation, micro-grids can support factories and large appliances like refrigerators. In order to provide these levels of service, micro-grids are much more complex and costly than off grid generation. In order to provide consistent power, a micro-grid must have some level of redundancy, and not rely entirely upon inconsistent generation sources like solar or wind.

The basic architecture of a micro-grid is as follows: Generation source s and fuel , load balancing electronics, power conditioning electronics and distribution network.

The generation source often is a combination of a renewable source and diesel or gas generator, possibly with a battery bank to better match the load and capacity. The electronics required to autonomously operate micro-grids must be fast responding as there is typically less averaging due to the smaller number of generation sources and loads. Micro-grids also have the benefit that as the centralized grid expands, it can be relatively simple to merge the two grids, ultimately powering the micro-grid area completely from the main grid.

Though micro-grids are a much more complete solution than off-grid generation, they are expensive, require specialized maintenance are are simply not practical in many situations. In previous mass-electrification efforts, like South Africa, there have been broad and substantial economic gains achieved almost immediately. The technologies discussed above have the potential to create much of the same effect, reducing poverty in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the world.

As the cost of manufacturing and physical transportation for technologies like solar and micro-hydro continues to decrease, deployment will increase. Already more and more electricity generation methods are becoming competitive at the level that could be afforded by these relatively poor areas see Fig.