Accelerating Mini-grid Feasibility Assessments with Rapid Engineering and Business Model Evaluation

There are over 700 million people without access to electricity in the world today, most of which live in Sub-Saharan Africa. Due to the high cost of grid extension, off-grid mini-grids with renewable energy technologies have been considered to be a least cost option for providing electricity access for communities, with solar home systems common for isolated households. However, mini-grid feasibility assessments can be expensive, time consuming, and achieve limited accuracy with current planning tools and constraints. In this paper we develop new planning processes for off-grid mini-grid systems and demonstrate this approach for a mini-grid project for an off-grid community in Sierra Leone, with comparisons made to conventional planning steps. Results show a decrease in assessment time per site of over 75-80% when compared to conventional practices, and provide additional benefits including power engineering, costing of the distribution network, and more detailed cashflow and business model analysis.