Scaling up the electricity access and addressing best strategies for a sustainable operation of an existing solar PV mini-grid: A case study of Mavumira village in Mozambique

Abstract

Access to electricity in a sustainable, affordable, and reliable manner is still a challenge, especially for rural communities in developing regions. In this study, we applied the HOMER Pro software for scaling up electricity and finding the optimum system that can satisfy the future electricity demand cost-effectively. Additionally, we analyzed the aspects that could influence the sustainability of the project, based on selected indicators, to address the best strategies for future improvements in the system performance. The main source of information for this research was the data collection in the study area through interviews with 35 individuals, including the owners of households, revenue collectors, and local governance selected based on their level of involvement and also their knowledge about the project. We focused on the solar PV mini-grid system installed in Mavumira village in Mozambique. Our results showed that among various configurations analyzed, hybrid solar PV/diesel/battery is the most appropriate system, as it presents the lowest cost of electricity (LCOE) of 0.47 $/kWh compared to other solutions, such as diesel-only with 0.63 $/kWh. Moreover, we found that in the future, the system will require less government subsidy than today's case, as the optimized future system is 1.3 times more expensive than the expected future tariff (0.37 $/kWh). By investigating the sustainability of the project, we found that, on a scale from 1 to 5, the economic and social indicators like economic activities and safety scored high (5 and 4, respectively), meaning that they are likely to ensure the project's performance over its lifetime, compared to the technical and institutional indicators like the reliability of power supply and effectiveness of local governance, which were attributed low-performance scores (1 and 2, respectively). These last aspects need to be adequately addressed, through local skills for operation and maintenance, to avoid failure in the system.