Sustainable PV Minigrids in Lesotho - Resilience Fund Project

全国电气化率为41%，莱索托在电网扩展和离网解决方案的电气化方面落后于南部非洲的同行。在农村尤其如此，那里60%的人口居住，但只有不到10%的人通电。尽管存在对现代能源服务的需求，这可以加速发展并创造商业机会。由于山区地形复杂，人口稀少，电网扩展对农村电气化来说成本太高。微型电网是应对这一挑战的一个可能的解决方案。它们已在撒哈拉以南非洲和东亚被广泛采用。与非洲邻国不同，莱索托至今还没有使用微型电网。该项目旨在使微型电网技术适应莱索托独特的地理和气候，并证明它们可以成为农村能源获取的卓越可持续解决方案。我们将采用项目合作伙伴GramOorja在印度60多个偏远农村社区成功应用的微型电网模式，为莱索托创建一种创新的技术和商业模式，将微型电网与一系列量身定制的提高生产力的技术和服务（如抽水、碾磨谷物、创业）相结合。根据莱索托的要求，我们将与当地社区合作，设计和测试量身定制的技术和商业模式，在提供能源获取的同时提高这些社区的农村生产力和经济增长。因此，我们的产出包括严格评估莱索托微型电网技术的需求和优先事项，一套适应莱索托需求和条件的互补技术模式，一套同样适应莱索托国家需求和行为的商业模式，验证该技术和商业模式作为商业上可持续和高影响力的农村电气化解决方案，以及一种创新的融资模式，用于扩大微型电网模式，以便在莱索托广泛采用。尽管全球COVID大流行造成了一些问题，但该项目仍在按计划进行，但我们正在为该申请申请少量补充资金，以便我们获得智能计量技术，这不仅使我们能够远程监控系统，收集未来成功推出这些解决方案所需的数据（考虑到与COVID相关的时间/预算影响，这一点很重要，否则将使数据收集变得困难）；而且还将使我们能够以对covid - 19敏感和负责任的方式运营迷你电网，因为它们无需挨家挨户收取费用和抄表。

At a national electrification rate of 41%, Lesotho lags behind its Southern African peers in both electrifications by grid extension and off grid solutions. This is especially true in the rural villages where 60% of the population lives yet less than 10% are electrified. This is despite the fact that there is need for modern energy services that could accelerate development and create business opportunities. Grid extension is too expensive for rural electrification because of difficult mountainous terrain, and the sparse nature of the population. Mini-grids are a possible solution to this challenge. They have been widely adopted in Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia.Unlike its African neighbours, Lesotho has not used minigrids to date. This project aims to adapt minigrid technology to Lesotho's unique geography and climate, and demonstrate that they can be a superior sustainable solution for rural energy access. We will adapt the successful minigrid model that project partner GramOorja has applied in over 60 remote rural communities in India to create an innovative technology and business model for Lesotho, combining a minigrid with a set of tailored productivity-enhancing technologies and services (eg water pumping, grain milling, entrepreneurship). Adapting this to Lesotho's requirements will see us engaging with local communities to design and test tailored technology and business models that deliver energy access whilst increasing rural productivity and economic growth in those communities.Thus our outputs include a rigorous assessment of needs and priorities from minigrid technology in Lesotho, a set of complementary technology models adapted to Lesotho's needs and conditions, a set of business models similarly adapted to Lesotho national needs and behaviour, a validation of that technology and business model as a commercially sustainable and high impact solution for rural electrification, and a innovative finance model for scaling up the minigrid models for widespread adoption in Lesotho.The project is on-track despite the issues caused by the global COVID pandemic, but we are requesting a small amount of supplementary funding in this application to allow us to acquire smart-metering technology, which will not only allow us to monitor the systems remotely to collect the data necessary for future successful rollout of these solutions (important given the COVID-related timing/budget impacts, which would otherwise have made data collection difficult), but also will allow us to operate the minigrids in a COVID-sensitive and responsible fashion, since they remove the need to house-to-house fee collection and meter reading visits.