Power Outages, Firm Productivity, and Generator Ownership in East Africa

A Rising Role for Decentralized Solar Minigrids in Integrated Rural Electrification Planning? Large-Scale, Least-Cost, and Customer-Wise Design of Grid and Off-Grid Supply Systems in Uganda

“…The scenarios are defined as follows: (a) Reference Scenario, described in the previous section, assumes that some upstream investments in generation expansion, transmission, and distribution grid reinforcements happen, so reliability reaches 90% in this rural territory; (b) 85% Grid Reliability Scenario. According to [72] and [75], this is an estimation of the present average reliability of the grid supply in Uganda and the need for diesel backup by companies that require 24 × 7 services. In this scenario, we assume that no significant improvements will happen before 2030; (c) 97% Grid Reliability Scenario analyzes what would be the least-cost solution in case upstream investments in the Southern Service Territory manage to get close to total reliability in 2030; (d) The average reliability of the minigrids supply in these scenarios remains constant at 98.7% since all the scenarios have the same demand profiles, critical and non-critical periods and uses, and the same catalog of generation components.…”

“…(a) Reference Scenario, described in the previous section, assumes that some upstream investments in generation expansion, transmission, and distribution grid reinforcements happen, so reliability reaches 90% in this rural territory; (b) 85% Grid Reliability Scenario. According to [72,75], this is an estimation of the present average reliability of the grid supply in Uganda and the need for diesel backup by companies that require 24 × 7 services. In this scenario, we assume that no significant improvements will happen before 2030;…”