Application of advances in automotive technologies to electrification in rural sub-Saharan Africa
Continued lack of electriﬁcation in rural sub-Saharan Africa poses a major challenge. The consequences are well documented. Major research is required to redress the situation but the meagre ﬁnancial and energy resources are major hurdles. In the meantime elsewhere in the ﬁrst world, investment in research and innovation continue to attract investors. For example a massive automotive energy conservation research drive was initiated in the mid 1990's by a Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles (PNGV). The PNGV advanced three important public policy objectives: environmental protection, energy security, and U.S. economic competitiveness. To achieve this mammoth challenge they proceeded by re-examining automotive energy conservation right from ﬁrst principles. Their centrepiece was a coordinated portfolio of hundreds of research projects by among others, 19 US Federal National Laboratories, United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR), automotive parts suppliers, university research facilities and a range of stakeholders. These were subsequently augmented by similar efforts in Europe and Japan. The thrust of this work draws parallels between an automobile and a remote village to consider the adaptation of the new automotive technologies to rural electriﬁcation. The author further augments this by additional contributions in load modelling, mini distribution network loss minimisation and energy economy by appropriate system conﬁguration. The main issues that are shared by an automobile and a remote rural village can be revealed as ﬁnite energy resources without a supporting grid infrastructure, which must cope with, poor energy resource-to-need conversion technologies, adverse human factors, poor load factors, inefﬁcient appliances and poor storage technologies, among others. These must all interact to meet objectives on service quality and the environment. Furthermore, the expected economies of scale in the automotive industry should subsequently make the adoption of these technologies affordable for rural applications.
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