The Potential of Mini Grids and Critical Factors - Discussion

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Comprehensive Country Ranking for Renewable Energy Based Mini-Grids Providing Rural Off-Grid Electrification

By C.Breyer - Reyer Lemoine Institut


1. The specific criteria for mini-grids has to be checked at the end locally.

2. How was the rural population calculated?

  • We took into account the number of rural electrification projects per country (%) and the level of poverty (%)

3. Why were some countries that clearly have a huge electrification rate excluded? (E.g. Bangladesh)

  • This was decided upon a combination of market, political environment and the weighting and scoring

4. Did you make a sensitivity analysis for each variable?

  • Yes

5. How were the ability to finance the project and financial costs like company set ups and infrastructure taken into account?

  • This was not considered because it was so extensive the investigation
  • Furthermore, all the collected data is standardized and may not reflect exactly the situation in each country




Potential of Mini-grids and Critical Factors

by Dr. Teodoro Sanchez of Practical Action UK


1. How did you come about deciding upon which factors were critical or important?

  • To begin with, several specialists from different areas discussed and came up with the critical/important factors. Finally a practical field investigation was done to verify which of these factors were really critical or just important.



An Objectives Analysis for Improved Holistic Design of a Rural Electrification System

By Maizaklah Ayu Abdullah


1. How was the leader of the community approached?

  • The leaders have to know how in other communities mini-grids are working by visiting other sites. The community has to be a very active player in the system. They should suggest energy solutions, among other things.
  • If there is no compromise by the community the project fails very quickly.

2. What is the socio-economic background of the communities?

  • The people don’t handle money very often, thus they have to be given a basic education on this.




Designing a Sustainable Model for Financial Viability of Decentralized Bio-fuel Based Power Projects

By Debajit Palit


  • The water for producing biofuel is enough for biofuel based mini-grids.
  • Biofuel is produced by big plants and needs to be decentralized.


Further Information

energypedia Article: The Potential of Mini Grids and Critical Factors

More information can be found at Micro Perspectives for Decentralized Energy Supply Conference - 2013.