Sustainable PV Minigrids in Lesotho - Resilience Fund Project

莱索托的全国电气化率为41%，在电网扩展和离网解决方案方面都落后于南部非洲同行。在农村尤其如此，那里60%的人口生活，但只有不到10%的人通电。尽管需要现代能源服务来加速发展和创造商业机会，但情况仍然如此。由于山区地形复杂，人口稀少，扩大电网对农村电气化来说过于昂贵。小型电网是应对这一挑战的一个可能的解决方案。它们在撒哈拉以南非洲和东亚地区被广泛采用。与非洲邻国不同，莱索托迄今为止还没有使用过迷你网。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上级可持续解决方案。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，为莱索托创造一种创新技术和商业模式，将微型电网与一套量身定制的提高生产力的技术和服务（例如抽水，谷物碾磨，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，我们的成果包括对莱索托小型电网技术的需求和优先事项进行严格评估，一套适应莱索托需求和条件的补充技术模型，一套类似地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在莱索托的广泛采用。尽管全球COVID大流行造成了问题，但我们正在申请少量的补充资金，以使我们能够获得智能计量技术，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（重要的是考虑到新冠肺炎相关的时间/预算影响，否则将难以收集数据），而且还将使我们能够以一种对COVID敏感和负责任的方式运营迷你电网，因为它们消除了挨家挨户收取费用和仪表阅读访问的需要。

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.