There are around 2 billion people in the world who do not have access to adequate
clean water supplies, electric lighting, primary health care, education and other
basic services. At the Millennium Assembly of the United Nations in 2000, the
international community adopted the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),
and set clear and ambitious targets for improving the conditions of these disadvantaged
people. The focus of the programmes of the world's development assistance agencies
(bilateral and multilateral donors, development banks, NGOs) are now clearly aimed
at poverty alleviation in general, and at achieving the MDG targets in particular.
The MDGs were reaffirmed at the UN Summit in 2005, and the G8 Summit at Gleneagles
in 2005 agreed a Plan of Action, including clean energy for the developing world.
This work contributes to overcoming the critical barriers to wide-spread PV deployment and implementation through the development, dissemination and application of a series of guideline documents to promote the necessary infrastructure requirements in developing countries. The aim has been to develop and disseminate a coherent series of reports to promote the necessary infrastructure requirements in developing countries to help overcome the critical barriers to widespread PV deployment and implementation. Six Recommended Practice Guides (RPGs) have been published by Task 9. Subtask 10 was essentially completed in Phase 1.
The overview document on issues for photovoltaics in developing countries 'Photovoltaics for Development:' the Key to Success,' has been expanded to include micro-hydro and wind energy technologies. The document will present a short overview of PV deployment in developing countries and the key points and messages of Task 9. It has also been realigned to emphasize the linkages to the Millennium Development Goals and the International Action Programme that emerged from Renewables 2004 in Bonn and the G8 summit in the UK in 2005. This document will be published in 2006.
New, extended Executive Summaries for each of the RPGs were published in 2005. The RPG's have been promoted at a number of Workshops (see below), and are all available for download from the main IEA PVPS website. A French translation of the RPG Executive Summaries was also published in 2005.
Task 9 supports Task 1 in the collection of PV market data for non-PVPS (developing) countries.
PVSDC stimulates awareness and interest amongst the multi- and bilateral agencies, NGOs and other target sectors on the technical and economic potential and opportunities arising for RETs. This enables decision-makers to obtain the expertise and knowledge that is required for the appropriate RET system deployment.
The first Task 9 meeting of 2005 was held at the World Bank in Washington
DC, in conjunction with Energy Week. This was an important gathering of
stakeholders concerned with energy in the developing world and included
a number of other events, such as a meeting of the Renewable Energy Financing
and Policy Network Forum, which is a World Bank input to the Renewable Energy
Global Policy Network (REGPN), which was a key outcome of the Renewables
2004 conference in Bonn. Task 9 made a presentation in the session entitled
Energy and the Millennium Development Goals.
Task 9 also contributed a booth to the Energy Week Exhibition, in the atrium of the World Bank. This is shown in Figure 1. A total of around 750 participated in Energy Week. The Washington meeting was co-organized by the US Expert. This was his last contribution to Task 9 (See Figure 2). The Washington meeting included an expert from Zambia, supported by Sweden.
A regional Workshop was held in Vientiane, Lao PDR in April. Laos has one of Asia's lowest per capita electrification rates, with less than 30 % of rural households having access to electricity. At the same time, the country exports more electricity, generated by hydro, to neighbouring countries Thailand and Vietnam, than it consumes domestically. There is a lot of experience with small PV systems and micro hydro, and ambitious plans to electrify the whole country, the government target being 90 % electrification by 2020. Typical use of PV in a village is illustrated in Figure 3, with the use of the electricity shown in Figure 4. The workshop was organized by the French expert and supported by ADEME, and focused on delivery models and non-technical aspects of rural electrification. The 40 delegates included representatives from Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, as illustrated in Figure 5. The work of Task 9 was presented at the 20th European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference in Barcelona in June.
The 2nd Experts Meeting of 2005 was held in Shanghai, in conjunction with the 15th Photovoltaic Science and Engineering Conference (PVSEC-15) and Exhibition. The meeting included several observers from China who also made special presentations on the various major projects in China. Task 9 contributed to a PVPS Workshop within the conference and participated in an Industry workshop.
There were around 2 000 delegates at the conference, and the exhibition was the largest PV show ever. Use of PV in China is expanding rapidly, as is PV cell and module manufacture. Total installed capacity has grown rapidly in just a few years, to possibly as much a 75 MWp. China is becoming a major player in the world PV scene and the Task 9 team have developed close relationships over the past several years. China is also the world's largest user of small-hydro power, generating 5 % of it's total electricity requirement from this source. Despite rapid economic progress, there are still around 28 million people in around 7 million homes in 23 000 villages without electricity. The National Township Electrification Programme Song Dian Dao Xiang invested 560 million USD to install about 16 MWp, together with wind and small-hydro (some with back-up diesel) between 2003 and 2005. The successor programme Song Dian Dao Cun, has the goal of electrifying 20 000 villages over 10 years, at a cost of around 5 billion USD. The China Renewable Energy Law, which becomes effective in January 2006, is expected to include a feed-in tariff for PV (and other renewables). It is possible that China could have both urban grid-connection and rural electrification programmes.
PVPS and the millennium development goalsDelivering a real contribution towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is one of the strong driving principles behind PVSDC.Neither access to modern energy services in general, nor provision of electricity are recognised as specific goals in themselves. Nevertheless they can play a central role in poverty alleviation, through impacts on education, health and local enterprise, as well as access to modern telecommunications and information technology resources. The MDGs and some of the roles for PV are: | |
| 1. | Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger - Lighting allows increased income generation and reliable electricity encourages enterprise development, energy for water supplies for cooking and drinking and water for irrigation increases food production. |
| 2. | Achieve universal primary education - Electricity enables access to educational media and communications, energy helps create a more child-friendly environment and reduces school drop-out rates and lighting in schools allows evening classes and helps retain teachers. |
| 3. | Promote gender equality and empower women - Availability of modern energy means that women do not have to carry out survival activities, good quality lighting permits home study and reliable energy services offer scope for women's enterprises to develop. |
| 4. | Reduce child mortality - Electricity can bring about less indoor air pollution, increased safety, free up more time to be spent on child care and provide pumped water and purification. |
| 5. | Improve maternal health - Energy services provide access to better medical facilities (vaccine refrigeration, equipment sterilization, operating theatres). Provision of cooked food and space-heating contribute to better health. |
| 6. | Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases – Energy services provide better medical facilities, and energy can help produce and distribute sex education literature and contraceptives. |
| 7. | Ensure environmental sustainability - Traditional fuel use contributes to erosion, reduced soil fertility and desertification, energy can be used to pump and purify clean ground water. |
| 8. | Develop a global partnership for development – Energy supply can contribute to the development of information and communication technologies in remote / rural areas. Presentations and workshops are being planned, in cooperation with the REEEP, for Brazil, India and South Africa. There is a standing invitation to hold an event in East Africa, probably Uganda but this is expected to be in 2007. At least two new projects, the Inner Mongolia Alternative Energy Supply for Rural Poor in Remote Areas, supported by the Asian Development Bank, and the Yemen Rural Electrification and Renewable Energy Development Project, supported by GEF/World Bank/GTZ, will make use of the Task 9 RPGs in 2006. |
This work reviews and investigates the techno-economic aspects and potential of PV systems for provision of rural services and poverty alleviation. This focuses on the role of PV in the provision of water, health, education and Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) services, PV battery charging stations, hybrids and village mini-grids. The approach is to collate information from topical PV case studies and use the information to develop review documents and guides.
There are five main activities:
- Economic Assessment of PV Energy Services
- PV Based Energy for Water Services
- PV in Health, Education and ICT
- Battery Charging Stations and PV Hybrids and Mini-grids
- Role of PV in the Alleviation of Poverty
Progress with this subtask has been very slow during 2005 because of reduced levels of input by several of the experts. No new publications have been prepared.
The European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) is a sponsor member of PVPS. EPIA has joined Task 9 as a member and the EPIA Catapult Programme and Task 9 have agreed to work closely together to develop a new joint work plan.
This investigates technical and economic aspects of PV power packs and large-scale (~ 1 MWp) grid-connected PV plants. There are many locations in the developing world where electricity demand is growing rapidly and lack of capacity frequently results in power cuts or 'brown-outs' caused by indiscriminate load shedding. This Subtask will collate relevant case studies and review situations in developing countries where network capacity and/or generation capacity needs to be increased and where it is cost-effective to install PV (or PV hybrids) as an alternative. The work will also examine emerging grid-connected or grid-support applications for PV in developing countries.
The objective is to evaluate the techno-economic aspects of small PV Power Packs (which provide back-up power supply to customers when grid supplies are cut) and Grid support applications in developing countries. The main outputs will be review documents and a number of relevant case studies.
Australia will lead the work for Subtask 50, commencing with a review of grid-connected systems for developing countries. A draft report was circulated in 2005, and the review process will start in 2006.
This work collates and disseminates information from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) process, which may become relevant to the deployment of PV systems in developing countries. Many developing countries are looking to the CDM to help leverage funding to achieve sustainable economic development, through investment in renewable energy and end-use efficiency projects which fit with their developmental needs. This Subtask will provide updated information on the opportunities for PV project developers and governments in developing countries arising from the CDM process. It has become clear that PV cannot significantly compete with other options for CDM projects. An internal Task 9 paper recommends that work on this subtask should be put in abeyance.
