Abstract
Impacts of socio-economic factors on temporal diffusions of solar electricity microgeneration systems in a rural developing community are modelled and simulated using an agent-based model (ABM). ABMs seek to capture the overall macro-effects of different micro-decisions in a virtual world; they model individual entities within a complex system and the rules that govern them to capture the overall effects of their interactions. Results showed that falling PV costs coupled with generally increasing grid electricity costs would lead to increased uptake of PV systems in such communities. On the other hand, high lending rates in most developing nations would stifle use of credit facilities in purchases of PV systems and thus diminishing their uptakes. Results also showed that introduction of favourable government policies in forms of subsidies would strongly stimulate PV installations in such communities. Social acceptance is important for diffusion of any new technology into a given market and more so with solar systems; results show that neighbourhood influence plays major roles in PV diffusions with many households installing PV systems if their neighbours within a given sensing radius do the same. Results also showed that requiring a certain percentage of neighbours to have installed PV before a household considered doing the same could have negative effects on PV installations as decisions to install PV are influenced by many independent and dependent factors and not by neighbourhood threshold alone.
Highlights
Development of electricity delivery infrastructures are path-dependent, meaning, each development decision andHow to cite this paper: Opiyo, N. (2015) Modelling Impacts of Socio-Economic Factors on Temporal Diffusion of PV-Based Communal Grids
Effects of socio-economic and technical factors on the diffusions of PV-based communal grids in a typical rural developing community have been modelled and simulated using an agent-based model developed in Netlogo
Falling PV costs coupled with generally increasing utility grid electricity costs stimulate PV installations and subsequent communal grid formations and connections
Summary
Development of electricity delivery infrastructures are path-dependent, meaning, each development decision andHow to cite this paper: Opiyo, N. (2015) Modelling Impacts of Socio-Economic Factors on Temporal Diffusion of PV-Based Communal Grids. Different modelling tools and techniques have been applied in planning rural electrification paths in many countries. These often view this problem as a question of expansion of grid coverage through extensions of existing transmission and distribution lines from central power generation stations and seldom address the unique and regionally-specific challenges presented by many developing nations [1]-[3]. Bhattacharyya and Timilsina point to models that can capture a developing nation’s unique contexts as a key input for future policy formulation while Urban et al point to the lack of focus on off-grid technologies based on locally available renewable energy resources and on the prevailing socio-economic and cultural factors [5] [6]
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