Abstract
Ghana’s population is in a steady growth, which is accompanied by increasing energy demand. At the same time a significant proportion of the population lack access to the electricity grid. Within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) access to energy shall be available for everyone (SDG 7). Solar Mini Grids can be used to meet this growing energy demand and give environmentally friendly access to energy in remote regions. Since Solar Mini Grids can be complex systems that require many components such as photovoltaic modules, charge controllers, cables, and battery storage it is crucial to analyze the environmental impacts of these Mini Grids considering the full life cycle. For this purpose, a generic Excel based LCA model has been created to show the optimization potentials of individual system components of Solar Mini Grids and analyze the most environmentally friendly construction. Results for the first case study at the Don Bosco Mini Grid in Tema show that the emissions are highly dependent on the technology and capacity of the energy storage as well as the utilization rate. The utilization rate describes the ratio of the consumed electricity to the produced electricity for cases where a feed in to the national grid is not possible. Therefore, it is important to design the Mini Grid and the energy storage beforehand considering local conditions in a way the environmental impact over the Solar Mini Grid life cycle can be optimized. This can be achieved by using the generic LCA model developed in this paper.
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