Gyapa cookstoves for more efficient cooking
Nearly 3 billion people in the developing world cook food and heat their homes with traditional cookstoves or open fires. The 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study estimates that 4 million premature deaths occur every year due to smoke exposure from these methods. In fact, this is the fifth worst risk factor for disease in developing countries and women and children are the most affected.This project, a partnership between ClimateCare and Relief International, introduces the Gyapa, an insulated and efficient cookstove, to families in Ghana. The Gyapa stove cooks food more quickly, requires 50-60% less fuel and is less smoky. It is priced at below $10 making it accessible to households ... Read more
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PayGo solar home systems to rural off-grid communities in Sub-Saharan Africa
Azuri Technologies is a commercial provider of PayGo solar home systems to rural off-grid communities. With the widest reach of any provider in Sub Saharan Africa, Azuri is leveraging solar and mobile technology to allow users in 11 different countries to access power on a pay-as-you-go basis. This provides clean, safe renewable energy for as little as half the cost of the fossil fuels being replaced, and delivering economic, health, and social benefits. Azuri’s HQ is located in Cambridge, United Kingdom, with staff based in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Contents Objective Target Group Output Key Features of the Case Sustainable Financing Supportive Policies a... Read more
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Mobisol Smart Solar Solutions for Africa
Mobisol delivers a clean, affordable alternative to fossil fuels for low-income households living without reliable access to energy. The Berlin-based company was founded in 2010 by Mobisol’s CEO Thomas Gottschalk, an engineer by trade, with the aim to overcome barriers to entry and growth for the adoption of solar energy in rural areas of developing countries.Working with an expanding team of engineers and IT specialists, the central product-service-offer was designed. Mobisol’s pilot phase in East Africa in 2012 confirmed the promise and replicability of its business model. Mobisol’s products and services have, since then, been continuously expanded and optimized, ... Read more
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Bringing hydro power to the rural areas of Pakistan
The North West region of Pakistan is remote and mountainous, and many people live in isolated villages. Geography alone would make it challenging to provide electricity to these villages, since mountain roads are treacherous, some areas are cut off for months by snow in the winter, and there is the ever-present risk of natural disasters including earthquakes and floods. These challenges are compounded by political instability and precarious security conditions. The Sarhad Rural Support Programme (SRSP) has worked for many years with communities in the region, and saw first-hand how lack of electricity held back development. It also saw potential for producing electricity from hydro-p... Read more
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Solar Home Systems to nomadic herders in Mongolia
Mongolia is a country of more than 1.5 million square meters where roughly a quarter of the population lives like nomadic herders. This makes it extremely difficult to connect this part of the population to the national grid. Instead, the Government of Mongolia teamed up with the World Bank and other international donors to provide portable Solar Home Systems to more than 100,000 families over a course of 12 years enabling 70% of herders to have access to modern energy. The project involved a cost-sharing mechanism in which the Government and donors subsidized the purchase of Solar Home Systems meaning that herders themselves only had to paid half the price. Also, by relying on an ex... Read more
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The Bethel Business and Community Development Center in Lesotho
The Bethel Business and Community Development Center (BBCDC) is a commercial and technical school located in a remote rural district of Lesotho that began operations in 1993 on barren land with institutional support from UNICEF and the local RC Mission Church. It is an example of how local communities can apply a holistic approach to optimizing the use of energy as well as preserve the natural environment. BBCDC addresses several thorny and interdependent development problems, including: educational innovation, landscape regeneration and water resources improvement, financial independence, adoption of renewable energy platforms, appropriate technology, and design of the built environ... Read more
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Empowering the poor: An OASYS story from Dhenkanal District, Odisha, India
In the process of finding solutions for sustainable rural electrification, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and a group of research partners, led by De Montfort University, the UK, implemented the ‘Off-grid Access Systems for South Asia’ (OASYS South Asia) project. Through this project, a systematic analysis was conducted to develop an off-grid delivery model framework and implement that framework through demonstration projects in un-electrified villages across different regions in India. These demonstration projects included mini-grids, micro-grids, and pico-grids, providing either Alternate Current (AC) or Direct Current (DC) power to households and shops/micro... Read more
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Electricity generation for isolated communities in amazon region using mini photovoltaic plants with mini-networks and prepayment system
The universalization of power supply services in Brazil was established by Act 10.438/2002, which determines that all distribution concessionaries have to provide services to all residents in their concession area. By the end of 2006 almost 1,5 million homes in the rural area had no access to power energy services mainly in the Northern and Northeastern regions (Electrobras, 2012).Many of such homes are in difficult access areas far from electrical networks and with low population densities and often in environmental protection areas. Hence, regions where renewable energy technologies are the only options - or the less expensive options – for electricity.The project studied in ... Read more
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Iluméxico: Working with families to fight energy poverty in Mexico
Iluméxio is a social enterprise based in Mexico that works with solar energy to fight energy poverty. The business model consists of four pillars: TECHNOLOGY: They design, produce and manufacture solar charge controllers, and they use mainly Mexican suppliers for the rest of the solar system components; DISTRIBUTION: The last-mile distribution model is based in local Community Engineers that run a local office, these team members promote, sell, install and provide technical service to all customers; MICROFINANCING: Working with the base of the pyramid requires financial schemes so that people can buy their systems according to their own economic possibilities, the financial pr... Read more
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The New Lao Cook Stove Project
The NLS project was initiated through the Cambodian Fuelwood Saving Project (CFSP) in collaboration with with the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy. In Cambodia, wood provides for more than 80% of people's energy needs. Today, all of the fuelwood in Cambodia comes from unsustainable and illegal logging of local forests, which has become a major issue due to the rapid pace of population growth and development. Cooking with wood and charcoal has direct negative health impacts on users, most of which are women. Indoor air pollution, mostly from wood and charcoal smoke, is responsible for respiratory, heart and eye problems. In order to address the health, energy and environmental p... Read more
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Toyola Efficient Charcoal Cook Stoves
Most urban households in Ghana cook on charcoal, using inefficient, polluting stoves made of thin sheet metal. The cost of charcoal is a significant proportion of household income. Nearly three quarters of charcoal production in Ghana comes from unsustainable wood, which means that using charcoal contributes to deforestation. Replacing inefficient traditional cook stoves with more efficient and cleaner stoves bring both environmental benefits and social and economic benefits to households who rely on traditional fuels such as wood or charcoal for cooking. Toyola Energy limited, a for-profit company was started in Ghana in 2003 by two Ghanaian entrepreneurs with financial support from... Read more
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Vietnam Rural Electrification Programme
Vietnam has gone through a rapid increase in electrification since 1990 where electrification levels jumped from a pre-policy reform rate of less than 50% in the late 1980s–early 1990s to 77% by 2001 and 96% by 2009 [1]. The Electrification Programme driven by the Vietnamese government has resulted in increased access for 82 million people between 1976 and 2009. One million people primarily in the northern mountainous regions of Vietnam are currently without access to electricity. Contents Objective Target Group Output Key Features of the Case Sustainable Financing Supportive Policies and Institutional Environment Building Local Capacity and Skills Community Participation an... Read more
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Mozambique Electrification Project Phase II
The Electricity II Project was initiated by the Government of Mozambique (GoM) as a follow up to the Electricity Project I and was appraised based on surveys undertaken by Electricidade de Mozambique (EdM) to extend and strengthen the national power grid to the rural and peri-urban areas of the Maputo Province. The project was financed through a US$21.55 million loan from the ADF and US$3.74 million contribution from EdM and was implemented between July 2008 and december 2003. Technical Assistance for the project was provided by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). The project was appraised by the World Bank following a request by the GoM and its main aim was to assis... Read more
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Energy access program in Brazil: “Light for all”
The “Light for all” program was launched by the Federal Government in November 2003, and it has as its goal to end the electric exclusion in the country in the rural ambit, reaching over 10 million people until the year of 2008. The Program has been coordinated by the Ministry of Mines and Energy, operationalized by Eletrobrás and executed by the electric power concessionaires and rural electrification co-operatives. For meeting the initial goal, R$ 20 billions was invested. The map of electric exclusion in the country revealed that the families with no Access to energy are mostly in sites with smaller Human Development Index and in low-income families. Approximate... Read more
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Increasing energy access in remote villages in Amazon region - ENERMAD Project
The lack of energy prevents the development of productive, economically organized and potentially employment and income-generator activities, leading to poverty and social exclusion. This article presents a Case Study focused on the electricity generation in an isolated community, developed facing to the social and environmental issues of the North region of Brazil, which concentrates the largest part of the Brazilian communities with no access to the electricity distribution network, a model of electricity supply in Brazil. The activities developed in the community, added to the ones of the residences, demand 200 kW that are supplied by a steam cycle that uses wood residues from the... Read more
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