This week: Village Power Supply with Renewables in developing countries – a matter of risk management

Goslar, 30.05.2012. Can solar, wind and micro-hydro power plants supply micro-grids while keeping the risk for private investors low? - “Yes, they can”, announces the Germany based company INENSUS and is scaling its successful demonstration projects in Senegal to another 50 villages in order to become a power provider for up to 50,000 people by 2014 together its local Joint Venture partner MATFORCE.

Towns and cities in developing countries often provide enough demand to be connected to the main electricity grid or to be supplied by diesel based mini-grids. The majority of people in developing countries however live in small villages and hamlets far off the large cities and towns. Light from kerosene lamps, candles, solar home systems, car batteries charged in the city and small gasoline generators run on fuel carried in bottles over tens of kilometers from the nearest fuel station are the available light and electricity sources in such villages. This harms the health and the environment and retards the local development. Under these conditions setting up small businesses or competitive workshops is almost impossible. In many villages people would be prepared to pay more than two Euros per kilowatt-hour of electricity if power was supplied reliably. Unfortunately, in the past, private investors refrained from micro-grid power supply due to considerable risk involved.

“This needed to change.” Thus, INENSUS investigated on success and risk factors of micro-grid projects worldwide and derived the MicroPowerEconomy business and risk management model for the results of this research. The model is now available and is being used to electrify villages based on a Private Public Partnership approach. MicroPowerEconomy comprises: Negotiation with the village on eye level, Smart Metering Technology for micro- an mini-grids developed by INENSUS keeping the grid stable as well as a tariff model providing reliability of planning to customers and power providers alike. On this basis, investments into renewable sources with battery storage outperform conventional diesel gensets in base-load coverage.

The European Commission rewarded this innovation with the European Business Award for the Environment 2012 which was handed over to the Managing Director of INENSUS Mr. Nico Peterschmidt on 24 May 2012 in Brussels.

The MicroPowerEconomy is being replicated in other African and Asian countries and is attracting attention from investors, ministries and development cooperation, as: MicroPowerEconomy means development options for villagers and attractive returns for investors.

INENSUS is a German SME specialized in development of electronics as well as technical and business consultancy for the decentralized power sector. INENSUS delivers plug and play or turn-key micro-grid power systems using the MicroPowerEconomy model.