The pace of rural electrification over much of the developing world has been painfully slow, especially in South Asia and Africa. Rural electrification programs can undoubtedly face major obstacles. The low population densities in rural areas result in high capital and operating costs for electricity companies. Consumers are often poor and their electricity consumption low. This post is on
grid rural electrification and there will be a similar future post on
offgrid rural electrification.
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The Challenge of Rural Electrification: D. Barnes |
Yet in spite of these problems, many countries have been quietly and successfully providing electricity to rural areas. In
Thailand, well over 90 percent of rural people have a supply. In
Costa Rica, cooperatives and the government power utility provide electricity to nearly 100% percent of the rural population. In
Tunisia, over 90% percent of rural households already have a supply. In studying countries like these and others there appear to be 8 steps to achieving successful rural electrification. These steps are taken from my book called
The Challenge of Rural Electrification: Strategies for Developing Countries. that examined 10 successful programs from around the world including the developed countries of the
United States and Ireland. I know that it appears these programs are in middle to high income countries, but many were low income when they initiated their programs.
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