Village Power - The Community Charging Station

Summary

Energy is vital for the development process of any community, region or country. As the United Nations Development Programme has stated, "providing the poor with access to clean, modern, affordable energy services has multiple, synergistic impacts on productivity, education, health, and gender equality... for the poorest people and countries, small, incremental increases in access to modern energy have led to dramatic gains in HDI [human development]."[1]

This idea utilises a centralised charging station, powered by solar electricity, to provide energy to underserviced, rural communities. Charging stations will be owned and operated by the community with technical support from Energy For Opportunity (EFO). Contrary to previous solar interventions that focussed on small, individual home systems, this model allows for unique products and solutions to be developed that meet the full spectrum of community needs. A for-profit model will be utilised that creates livelihoods opportunities and a revenue stream that can be used by the community for system expansion and maintenance or other community projects.       

This idea builds upon EFO's prize winning idea from the first round of the ARC contest, titled, "Create a solar powered energy revolution across West Africa." EFO's first round idea offered a broad concept of EFO's work, while this idea is an expansion of a specific EFO programme area: "solar power at the community level", and offers a specific budget, implementation strategy and business plan.

Needs Assessment

According to the 2005 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)  for Sierra Leone, only 8.5% of households listed electricity as the main source of light, with the majority of these households located in the major urban centres.[2] Current government plans to expand grid access are dedicated to increasing supply for the capital, Freetown, and rural electrification efforts are focussed on district headquarter towns and not the outlying rural areas. This lack of short or even medium term access to electricity will continue to hinder rural development opportunities.

Modern forms of electricity can go a long way in alleviating financial and physical burdens in Sierra Leone's rural areas, while offering a wealth of new opportunities. The presence of solar power in households reduces the need for kerosene and disposable batteries, which represent a financial burden on families, supply inferior lighting and can prove to be hazardous. Mobile phones can be regularly recharged, offering small-scale farmers broader connections for the selling of their produce and information about prices. While funds can also be raised at the village level thus offering opportunities for the widespread community growth and development.       

Required Resources

The required resources for this project can be split into two categories; financial and human.

1)      Financial resources - The exact requirements will be determined by the initial sizing of the system which is determined by both overall village size and initial 'connection' rates. A typical initial installation will be roughly 500-700W of installed capacity, costing between US$7500 and US$10500. This allows for community lighting and other charging facilities and an additional ten (10) households to be 'connected', either by direct connections or through battery charging options. If additional funds are available they can be utilised to purchase inventory such as low energy light bulbs, rechargeable lanterns, deep cycle batteries and small inverters, which can be sold for a small profit.

2)      Human resources - Community members will be active in every aspect of the system development and operations. It is critical to the long term viability of the charging station that community members are involved and understand the design, development, installation and maintenance of the system.

Business Case

Target communities will typically be smaller than one-hundred (100) households and marketing campaigns are not required to develop product interest. The largest challenge for this type of venture is introducing the new technology of solar power, as it requires a different way of using energy compared to generators or kerosene lanterns, which are the most familiar technologies in these communities. This is achieved through ongoing interactions between EFO and the community throughout the system development process and examples learned from initial implementers.  

A critical aspect of this idea's development and implementation relies of the ability of the charging station to generate revenue for the community, which allows for the system to be maintained and expanded. The exact make-up of the revenue stream depends on the products required by the community. These revenues will generally come from the following sources:

Plan and Execution

EFO staff have previous experience developing this concept while working with the Sierra Leone based organization the Environmental Foundation for Africa (www.efasl.org.uk). Through this work many of the implementation and operational issues have been identified and countermeasures developed. The most important project activities are as follow:

The ultimate goal of the operating philosophy is to create a sustainable enterprise that is managed, maintained and expanded by the community. However, experience also has shown that this cannot be achieved instantly due to the technical nature of the concept. Due to this, EFO will be an active stakeholder in the project operations for an extended period of time after the initial implementation has been completed. Any costs for this support will be drawn from the revenue stream but must be minimised to ensure benefits remain within the community.    

Real World Impact

Each system is dedicated to a single community and will serve all members of the community. It is difficult to estimate how quickly community members will begin to participate in the programme and it will depend on their own product choices.

As an example and based on a conservative expansion rate of fifteen (15) households per six (6) month period all community members can be connected to the system within three (3) years. This is a conservative rate based on low end estimates of revenues and full connectivity may occur much more quickly. It is also important to note that some benefits such as phone charging will be provided to the entire community immediately.     

[1] United Nations Development Programme. The Sustainable Difference: Energy and Environment to Achieve the MGDs. (New York: UNDP, 2005)  http://www.undp.org/energyandenvironment/sustainabledifference/PDFs/SustainableDifference.pdf page 16,17

[2] Government of Sierra Leone. Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper-2005. (Freetown: Government of Sierra Leone, 2005)