Consumers will be immune to supply quality problems in weak or underdeveloped electricity grids.
Access to a reliable energy supply increases the financial activity and boosts the quality of life. In advanced and high-productivity economies, supply reliability problems are less common, but produce important impacts. However, in less advanced economies or economies far away from the electrical grid energy supply can be unreliable
Institutions such as the World Bank or the Rockefeller Foundation are not unaware of these problems. Both participate in projects aimed to improve the existing access to electricity in under-developed countries or areas where electricity is unreliable and sometimes non-existent. An example of this is a $60M credit approved by the World Bank to help the Republic of Benin to improve its energy system. Benin is an African country where only 29% of homes have access to electricity and furthermore, in most cases supply is intermittent and of very poor quality. In parallel with this initiative, the Rockefeller Foundation has worked on other projects such as THIS ONE to promote the reliable access to energy for everyone, which is considered to be a basic requirement to eradicate poverty.
The problem of the quality of supply is not exclusive to underdeveloped countries. Energy quality issues are also seen across rural Europe, which is significant considering that 50% of the continent’s inhabitants are within rural areas. .The initiative FREE (Future of Rural Energy in Europe) proposes and promotes the use of distributed generation energy sources to improve energy efficiency, contribute to the security of supply and help to reduce GHG emissions.
The implementation of advanced distributed-energy microgrids allows us to supply far-away areas with reliable energy, using clean energy sources and storage technology. I form part of Norvento’s Microgrid Team where we develop renewable energy off-grid systems.
