The Role of Off-Grid Houses in the Energy Transition with a Case Study in the Netherlands

Abstract

Off-grid houses can be considered an important concept to increase the access to electricity throughout the world. Although there are quite some initiatives in place to improve the access to electricity, the implementation rate of practical solutions is far below the UN Sustainable Development Goal 7: Energy (SDG 7) + for 2030. This situation is most apparent in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the current trends of electricity access calculated by the World Bank indicate that this region will not be able to achieve the SDG 7 target. Another worldwide trend which may help to increase electricity access is that currently, a lot of renewable energy generation is realized locally in houses (especially Solar Photovoltaics (PV)). This paper reviews the recent developments to increase the access to electricity in the world and the implementation of off-grid houses in different scenarios. The focus here is on the different efforts to create off-grid houses considering their challenges on a macro and micro level. Moreover, potential research directions for technologies in off-grid houses are presented in more detail. For this, a case description of a possible off-grid house in the Netherlands is presented together with some initial simulations results for this case using solar PV, the Sea-Salt battery, and a Glycerol Fuel Cell. The simulations use the DEMkit software and the analysis is performed using measured house load data for a period in winter and in summer.

Investigation of Sustainable Technology Options: Wind, Pumped-hydro-storage and Solar potential to Electrify Isolated Ziway Islanders in Ethiopia

“…There are numerous initiatives to increase access to electricity, but its practicality rate is well below what the UN-Energy goal 7 set for 2030 [1]. This is even worse in Sub-Saharan Africa, and hence true in Ethiopia too.…”

“…Additionally, the fossil-based energy supply systems are one of the highest CO 2 emitters globally. Unless timely steps are taken to decarbonize the energy sector, the world may not be able to achieve the goals set in the series of submits such as the latest Paris Agreement, and the UN-energy goal7 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Access to economical, consistent, and sustainable energy sources can have a transformative impact on productivity, incomes, etc.…”

Innovation Dynamics of Socio-Technical Alignment in Community Energy Storage: The Cases of DrTen and Ecovat

“…For data on the technological and organizational development, we held interviews with technical sales manager of ECOVAT, marketing director of DrTen and initiators of both initiatives. We also collected and studied academic publications and other documents: two journal publications [91,92], three conference papers [22,93,94], several expert reports, two patents [95,96], several presentations, two master-theses [97,98] and one PhD thesis [99] related to ECOVAT and, for Dr.Ten batteries, three journal publications [5,100,101], three conference papers [22,102,103], several presentations and one PhD thesis [104].…”

The Effects of Rural Electrification on Quality of Life: A Southeast Asian Perspective

“…The implementation of RE projects has surged over the past decades under each countries' national energy plans in line with the 7th objective in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): "Energy for all" [2]. As a consequence, an increasing amount of literature has been dedicated to report on the techno-economic feasibility of different rural electrification schemes [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10], electrification policies or frameworks [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], as well as other social-related issues [19][20][21][22][23][24].…”

“…On a techno-economic basis, the impact of rural electrification can be associated with the scheme adopted. Grid extension is usually considered the best option as it guarantees a continuous supply with high power capability, but numerous studies have also demonstrated the feasibility of rural electrification using individual solar photovoltaic systems [4,25] or centralised systems [3,26]. The bottom line is that the electrification scheme is one important concern to be taken into consideration for these projects.…”