Electrification systems based on renewable energy have proven to be suitable for providing electricity autonomously to rural communities and thus reducing poverty. When implementing these systems, a management model is usually designed to maximise technical and financial sustainability. To improve the design and performance of systems, different evaluations of management models have been made that usually centre on products and final utilities. However, this excessively utilitarian vision of development restricts an analysis of the impact that these projects may have on people's lives. To overcome these limitations, we have used the Human Development approach to evaluate the management model of five electrification projects that use different technologies in Cajamarca (Peru). With this approach, the base of information is enhanced, which enables a broader assessment of various key dimensions of development that should be considered in the management model to improve the impact of such projects. The results show the weaknesses of the design and implementation process of the management model. Several ideas are proposed to avoid these weaknesses and to maximise the chance of success.
Autonomous systems based on the use of renewable energy (RE) have proven suitable for providing energy and sanitation services to isolated communities. However, most of these projects fail due to managerial weaknesses. In these systems, designing an appropriate management model is a key issue for sustainability and it is especially complex if it has to include different RE technologies. This paper is aimed developing a novel management model for RE projects to provide energy and sanitation services able to deal with any kind of technology. Moreover, a new method to evaluate the sustainability is proposed regarding the technical, the economic, the social/ethical, the environmental and the institutional/organizational dimension. In particular, the case study of Pucara (Peru) is presented, in which a RE project with six different technologies was implemented and the integral community management model was designed in 2011. The project sustainability was evaluated in 2013 and results showed the management model has succeeded to strengthen the sustainability of the project, especially in the institutional/organizational aspects.
KeywordsRenewable energy projects Basic energy and sanitation services Rural areas Management model Sustainability 2
Introduction. The Smart City, a contested idea Over the last decade, the smart city as a concept, discourse and practice, has evolved from a mainly corporate, business-led (often blurred) vision about the use of technology in contemporary cities, to a more expanded vision based on the development of strategies and initiatives from different urban actors. At the core of this approach, however, digital technologies continue to be promoted as the "primary driver for change" (Luque-Ayala and Marvin 2015, 2105). Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are seen as crucial tools to stimulate the economic development of cities and to improve urban management, as data, apps and software become part of the urban lexicon (Kitchin, 2015; Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2015). However, in the midst of these enthusiastic and positive attitudes regarding the appropriation of technologies to manage and experience the city, there are important critiques of the smart city discourse when it is presented as the only vision for present and future cities. Some stress its self-congratulatory rhetoric (Hollands, 2008 and 2015), the 'by default' apolitical nature of its apparatus (Söderström et al., 2014), or more recently, as literature emerges from other geographies, smart cities as neoliberal urbanism that promotes corporate accumulation of capital, land grabbing and dispossession (Datta, 2015; McFarlane and Söderström, 2017).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.