Abstract
Off-grid systems, and mini-grids in particular, are expected to play a significant role in improving electricity access to one billion people until 2040. One of the major challenges for mini-grids is associated with their high costs, low financial viability and local development impact. Productive use of electricity can be an important driver of local development and impacts the total load in a mini-grid. By using a mixture of high-resolution (minutes) measurements and long-term data (years) on electricity expenditures and purchased electricity from a mini-grid in the Tanzanian highlands, we analyse the technical and economic impact from household and productive use of electricity, respectively. The high-resolution data is analysed using performance indicators and the long-term data using regression tools. We find that a mixture of household use and productive use of electricity provides both technical and economic benefits for the operator. In addition, we find that while productive use customers only represent 25% of the customers, they generate 44% of the operator's income. Furthermore, productive use of electricity customers are also likely responsible for the peak demand in the mini-grid, which occurs during day time. Lastly, we find empirical evidence suggesting that expenditures and demand are unit elastic, which has implications on economic policies for supporting rural electrification.
Highlights
The study of the process gas as a parameter of its own in the case of the laser-powder bed fusion (L-PBF) process has become a necessary step towards gaining a better understanding of the laser-powder-atmosphere interactions [1,2,3,4]
Since the early development of industrial L-PBF systems, the role of the gas was primarily limited to establishing a laminar flow allowing for the removal of projections from the laser path [5,6] and ensuring a relatively low oxygen level, not necessarily low enough to inhibit oxidation reactions promoted by the high heat inputs
The present study confirms that a robust oxygen control system is necessary under the L-PBF conditions investigated, to establish and maintain a stable high purity process atmosphere and limit an additional pick-up of impurities, especially when processing alloys sensitive to oxidation, such as Ti-6Al-4V
Summary
The study of the process gas as a parameter of its own in the case of the laser-powder bed fusion (L-PBF) process has become a necessary step towards gaining a better understanding of the laser-powder-atmosphere interactions [1,2,3,4]. Even though more sophisticated techniques have been developed to establish the process atmosphere [7], doing so is still mostly achieved by purging the closed process volume with inert gas, such as argon, until the oxygen level is significantly lowered. Other impurities, such as water vapour and nitrogen, are removed in the same manner, but their content is not directly measured and instead is related to the residual oxygen content. While most systems typically set this value to 1000 ppm of oxygen, some machines offer more freedom for the operator to select this setpoint As this setpoint is reached upon purging, the inert gas is reused by a recirculation system via a pump
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