End-to-End Solar Borehole Business Models and Data Collection to Extend Sustainable Access to Energy and Water in Rural Tanzania

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

SVRG and OMASI collaborated on a Energy Catalyst 9 grant on a project in Tanzania to develop technology to encourage communities to make their regular repayments for solar borehole power systems, by being able to cut off power in cases of non-payment. Preexisting diesel generators are on site, so there is no question of the communities being without water. And communities are used to pay-as-you-go technology that cuts off when payments are missed, and accept them. The technology and business models we are currently trialling should result in repayments being completed after two years, after which time the system provides water pumping free of charge.While completing initial community engagement work and site selection for the ECR9 project SVRG and OMASI noticed that water access was consistently being mentioned by communities as their single highest priority, either for more water in communities that already have a borehole, or water availability in communities that do not. The only way to get more water, especially in communities with no access to water at the moment, is to drill new boreholes. This is a high risk and expensive process however, that is usually carried out either by the government agency for water (RUWASA) or by NGOs. Since our technology can ensure repayments are made, it is possible it could also be used to repay the costs of drilling and installing boreholes as well, moving the whole process into the private sector for the first time. With suitable technology, financial models and risk mitigations we estimate it might be possible to recover the whole costs of such a project in five years based on current water prices and diesel costs, which is just about possible with current commercial capital financing products.More immediate high impact is possible in completing sites that have already drilled boreholes, but lacked the funds to make them operational (ie no generator or pump). We can use the same models and technologies that we aim to develop in this project to finish those systems, and have the community repay within 3-4 years.