IEA-PVPS commits to continued cooperation with developing countries as Task 9 gets the green light for a further five years.

Task 9 is highly unusual in that it is the first Task under any of the International Energy Agency’s Implementing Agreements to consider a remit beyond IEA member countries.

The priority is to further increase the overall rate of successful deployment of PV systems in developing countries through increased cooperation and exchange of information between IEA-PVPS and developing countries, development banks, multilateral and bilateral aid agencies and other target groups. Important progress along this path was made under Phase 1 through the preparation and dissemination of a series of guides summarising best practice approaches for cradle-to-grave development of PV deployment programmes, and also through a number of seminars and workshops for the target groups.

Collaboration will continue with a variety of international partner organisations under Phase 2, including the respective develop-ment agencies of the participating IEA countries, the African and InterAmerican Development Banks and regional bodies such as the Latin American Energy Organisation (OLADE), the Economic Community Of West African States (ECOWAS) and Southern African Development Community (SADC). Task 9 will also seek to leverage other appropriate regional networks such as CLER, a regional organization of utilities from Latin America, The Green Independent Power Producers Network, and SouthSouthNorth, which creates information and technology links among southern countries and northern counterparts to develop the capacity to transact Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects.

This reflects an expanded scope for the Task over the next five year phase, to focus on three key additional subtasks: PV energy services for rural electrification and poverty alleviation; Market penetration activities; and PV and the Kyoto Mechanisms.

The first of these areas will serve to quantify the often cited, but relatively poorly supported claim that photovoltaic services contribute to the alleviation of poverty through a variety of social applications in the health, education and water sectors, and increasingly also in the Information and communication technology area.

The market penetration activities will evaluate the techno-economic aspects of small ‘PV Power Packs’ providing back-up power supply in the event of loss of grid supply, to ‘industrial’ PV plants for grid-support or peak load shaving. This Subtask will review situations in developing countries where network capacity and/or generation capacity need to be increased and where it is cost-effective to install PV or PV hybrids as an alternative.

The final subtask will consider the relevance of the CDM for PV project finance, in particular modalities and procedures for bundling small projects to overcome the currently prohibitive transaction costs, and also tracking of developments in relation to determination of baselines and monitoring methodologies for such small-scale projects.

The new work programme will result in a number of new case studies and reports, as well as electronic bulletins to keep interested parties abreast of developments.

Information

• Contact: Bernard McNelis
  Fax: +44 (0)1256 392701

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