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Does basic energy access generate socioeconomic benefits? A field experiment with off-grid solar power in India.

ABSTRACT: This article assesses the socioeconomic effects of solar microgrids. The lack of access to electricity is a major obstacle to the socioeconomic development of more than a billion people. Off-grid solar technologies hold potential as an affordable and clean solution to satisfy basic electricity needs. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India to estimate the causal effect of off-grid solar power on electricity access and broader socioeconomic development of 1281 rural households. Within a year, electrification rates in the treatment group increased by 29 to 36 percentage points. Daily hours of access to electricity increased only by 0.99 to 1.42 hours, and the confidence intervals are wide. Kerosene expenditure on the black market decreased by 47 to 49 rupees per month. Despite these strong electrification and expenditure effects, we found no systematic evidence for changes in savings, spending, business creation, time spent working or studying, or other broader indicators of socioeconomic development.

SUBMITTER: Aklin M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5435414 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Does basic energy access generate socioeconomic benefits? A field experiment with off-grid solar power in India.

Aklin Michaël M Bayer Patrick P Harish S P SP Urpelainen Johannes J

Science advances 20170517 5

This article assesses the socioeconomic effects of solar microgrids. The lack of access to electricity is a major obstacle to the socioeconomic development of more than a billion people. Off-grid solar technologies hold potential as an affordable and clean solution to satisfy basic electricity needs. We conducted a randomized field experiment in India to estimate the causal effect of off-grid solar power on electricity access and broader socioeconomic development of 1281 rural households. Within ...[more]

PMID: 28560328

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Project description:BACKGROUND:This paper examines the cost and benefits, both financial and environmental, of two leading forms of solar power generation, grid-tied photovoltaic cells and Dish Stirling Systems, using conventional carbon-based fuel as a benchmark. METHODS:First we define how these solar technologies will be implemented and why. Then we delineate a model city and its characteristics, which will be used to test the two methods of solar-powered electric distribution. Then we set the constraining assumptions for each technology, which serve as parameters for our calculations. Finally, we calculate the present value of the total cost of conventional energy needed to power our model city and use this as a benchmark when analyzing both solar models' benefits and costs. RESULTS:The preeminent form of distributed electricity generation, grid-tied photovoltaic cells under net-metering, allow individual homeowners a degree of electric self-sufficiency while often turning a profit. However, substantial subsidies are required to make the investment sensible. Meanwhile, large dish Stirling engine installations have a significantly higher potential rate of return, but face a number of pragmatic limitations. CONCLUSIONS:This paper concludes that both technologies are a sensible investment for consumers, but given that the dish Stirling consumer receives 6.37 dollars per watt while the home photovoltaic system consumer receives between 0.9 and 1.70 dollars per watt, the former appears to be a superior option. Despite the large investment, this paper deduces that it is far more feasible to get few strong investors to develop a solar farm of this magnitude, than to get 150,000 households to install photovoltaic arrays in their roofs. Potential implications of the solar farm construction include an environmental impact given the size of land require for this endeavour. However, the positive aspects, which include a large CO2 emission reduction aggregated over the lifespan of the farm, outweigh any minor concerns or potential externalities.

Project description:Highlights • Event-driven serverless architecture requiring low cost and maintenance effort.• Data processing, storage, visualization and sharing on fault-tolerant cloud services.• Backup grid monitoring and control given access to secure Internet connection.• Cloud-hosted operation logging simplies auditing and responsibility tracking.• Cyber security mechanism that complies with CIP requirements for the power grid. Operating a modern power grid reliably in case of SCADA/EMS failure or amid difficult times like COVID-19 pandemic is a challenging task for grid operators. In [11], a PMU-based emergency generation dispatch scheme has been proposed to help the system operators with the supply and demand balancing; however, its realization highly relies on the control center infrastructure for computing and communication. This work, rather than using the on-premises server and dispatch communication system, proposes and implements a cloud-centric serverless architecture to ensure the operation continuity regardless of local infrastructure’s availability and accessibility. Through its prototype implementation and evaluation at ISO New England, the solution has demonstrated two major advantages. Firstly, the cloud infrastructure is independent and fault-tolerant, providing grid monitoring and control capability even when EMS loses the corresponding functionality or when operators need to work remotely away from the control center. Secondly, the overall design is event-driven using serverless cloud services in response to the SCADA/EMS failure event. Thanks to “serverless”, the burden of the server provisioning and maintenance can be avoided from the user side. The cost of using public cloud services for this solution is extremely low since it is architected and implemented based on the event-driven Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) model. This work also develops a comprehensive cyber security mechanism to comply with critical infrastructure requirements for the power grid, which can serve as an exemplary framework for other grid operators to secure their cloud services.

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Does basic energy access generate socioeconomic benefits? A field experiment with off-grid solar power in India.

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Does basic energy access generate socioeconomic benefits? A field experiment with off-grid solar power in India.

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