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Īnother aspect where SHS lacks as an electrification pathway is the ease of climbing the electrification ladder. Figure 11 shows photos from the fieldwork. The field study was conducted to mainly find out the future needs of SHS users in rural Cambodia. The local users expressed interest in powering water kettles and rice cookers with their SHS. In a Cambodian field study carried out in 2016, inadequate power level has already been noted as a shortcoming of the present SHS. Ironically, some appliances, such as the water kettle and rice cookers, are already cheap enough (sub $5–10) for low-income communities to buy, but cannot be powered by the SHS due to the high-power rating of the appliances (e.g., a kW or more for the water kettle). However, a 70 W laptop charger can be easily powered by a 100 Wp SHS, while the appliance (laptop) itself might be well outside the range of typical appliances afforded by an SHS consumer. Horizon appliances, such as washing machines, are definitely outside the scope of the present day SHS, both in terms of power and in terms of price, as denoted by the icon in the upper right corner in the graph. Electricity access without sufficient consumption is detrimental to the idea of grid-based electrification, as evidenced in a study of African utilities, which found that only two of them have fully recovered their costs. Unfortunately, the present reality is that conventional African utilities tend to run a loss every time they connect to a rural customer. Unsurprisingly, the compounding effects of these inadequate revenues led to 81% of sub-Saharan African utilities reporting net financial losses in 2013. Inadequate revenues also result in progressive deterioration of the reliability of the transmission and distribution network. The high investment costs for grid extension were estimated in the order of €22,750/km for transmission line and €12,000/km for distribution line in most African countries in comparison, the grid-based retail electricity tariffs in these countries could range from €0.04/kWh (subsidized) to over €0.23/kWh (non-subsidized). For example, 55% of all customers serviced by Kenya Power and Lighting Corporation (KLPC) spend less than $3 a month on electricity, pushing the payback period of a typical KLPC grid connection to 44 years, even for higher levels of consumption. Otherwise, the extension efforts are almost certain to incur losses. However, grid extension is cost-effective only if the target region has a certain population density and energy demand.
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A bottom-up, interconnected SHS-based electrification pathway is proposed as the missing link among the present electrification pathways. However, the burning question is-from lighting a million to empowering a billion-can solar home systems get us there?The two main roadblocks for SHS are discussed, and the requirements from the ideal electrification pathway are introduced. In recent times, decentralized solar-based off-grid solutions, such as pico-solar and SHS, have shown the highest adoption rates and promising impetus with respect to basic lighting and electricity for powering small appliances.
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Solar-based solutions are the main focus in terms of off-grid electrification in this article, given the equatorial/tropical latitudes of the un(der-)electrified regions. To a lesser extent, centralized (off-grid) microgrids also require a minimum demand threshold and knowledge of the electricity demand. Grid extension can provide broad scale access at low levelized costs but requires a certain electricity demand threshold and population density to justify investments. In this article, the three different electrification pathways-grid extension, centralized microgrids, and standalone solar-based solutions, such as pico-solar and solar home systems (SHS)-are critically examined while understanding their relative merits and demerits. Nearly 840 million people still lack access to electricity, while over a billion more have an unreliable electricity connection.