This project will address research challenges identified through ongoing research and knowledge exchange partnerships in Sub-Saharan Africa  and the future work identified in three recent Strathclyde PhDs (Chikumbanje, 2022) (Keddar, 2023) (Eales, 2023).

The context of the research will be the ongoing challenge of achieving global electricity access.  The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 7 aims for 100% global access by 2030, but the world is not on track to achieve this.  Approximately 770 million people worldwide still lack reliable electricity. Access varies significantly across regions, with sub-Saharan Africa facing the most severe challenges. The main challenges to improving electricity access include inadequate infrastructure and planning capability/tools, high costs of energy solutions, lack of investment, and regulatory barriers. In many countries, the national electrical grid is underdeveloped, and quality/reliability of service is deteriorating. 

The University of Strathclyde has active research partnerships in Malawi and Zambia, two countries with some of the most significant electricity access challenges in Africa.  These partnerships enable interaction with policy makers, regulators, utilities, local academics and development agencies such as the United Nations Development Programme and World Bank.  The electricity sectors in these countries have three key challenge areas: achieving a reliable affordable supply to the small percentage of the population (and key industrial centres) that currently have access to the national grid, expanding electricity access to the unserved (mainly rural) populations, and addressing critical environmental and economic challenges through increased electrification of cooking, transport and productive use for business.  Although these challenges are interdependent, policy and strategy are disconnected and uncoordinated, hampering the effectiveness of ongoing efforts.

Current policy on the second challenge area (increased access to electricity) is informed by least-cost planning studies that utilise (sparse, incomplete) geospatial data on existing infrastructure and population clusters.  Delivered by consultants from international development partners, these studies take an either/or decision on providing access via national grid, isolated minigrids, or solar home systems.  In urban areas, grid densification aims to connect the growing peri-urban population to existing grid infrastructure.  For rural areas, extension of the national grid is viewed as the preferred option until a set cost per connection is reached, then isolated minigrids are adopted when grid extension becomes technically or economically unviable.  Where population clusters are deemed insufficient for minigrids, the ‘last resort’ option for electricity access is solar home systems.  

Key flaws in this approach are: 

• the geospatial electrification planning tools do not present intermediate stages from under-electrification to universal energy access scenarios.
• there is no consideration of how to maximise a limited electrification budget, which is typical in developing countries.
• national grids already suffer massive generation shortages and large-scale load shedding is standard practice – they are ill-equipped to support the massive number of new connections required.  The least-cost decision is based on only the network extension costs and does not account for the associated costs of major generation upgrade projects that would be required to support these new connections.
• demand assumptions are extremely basic and based on domestic consumption, not accounting for electric cooking, electric transport and productive use of energy for business use.  Accounting for new demand and potential network impacts is essential for effective planning of minigrid and main grid developments (Keddar, 2023).
• minigrid models are based on connecting clusters of domestic customers in the most difficult to reach locations.  To attract investment, minigrids must be planned around viable productive use of energy loads and have clear sustainable business/operational models (Eales, 2023)
• the current approach is static, not dynamic. The evolution of the system through intermediary stages, and beyond the target of 100% electricity access is not considered.  The further expansion and interconnection of mini and main grids plus the potential benefits of decentralised energy resources (DER) is essential to efficient investment planning and avoidance of stranded assets (Chikumbanje, 2022)

Previous rural electrification plans for Malawi and Zambia delivered relatively minor progress.  With the outlined flaws continuing to exist in recently renewed plans, there can be little expectation of improved performance in enabling increased electricity access.

Aims & Objectives

The main aim of this project is to develop an and/or modelling methodology for rural electrification planning in SSA that includes novel characterisation of demand (and demand growth), accounts for national grid generation limitations, and allows assessment of integrated/layered decentralised solutions working in parallel with the national grid.  The methodology will improve on existing geospatial electrification planning and provide a granular, year-on-year, understanding of electrification efforts and its impacts within a country. For case studies in Malawi/Zambia the methodology will be used to answer questions such as: what are the levels of investments required to achieve intermediate electrification access targets that governments of under-electrified countries set, what levels of energy access can be achieved with a known constrained energy access investment budget over a certain horizon, at what stage can the convergence of the grid and off-grid systems be expected in the electrification process?