Solar Home Systems ROLE

Rural households currently using kerosene lamps for lighting and disposable or automotive batteries for operating televisions, radios, and other small appliances are the principal market for the SHS. Solar PV is affordable to an increasing segment of the Third World's off-grid rural populations. For home lighting, the cost of an SHS is comparable to a family's average monthly expenditure for candles, kerosene or dry-cell batteries. Besides providing lighting, an SHS can also power a small TV. In addition, a family with an SHS need no longer purchase expensive dry-cell batteries to operate its radio-cassette player, which nearly every family has. Solar PV is competitive with its alternatives: kerosene, dry-cell batteries, candles, battery re-charging from the grid, Gensets, and grid extension.

Approximately 400,000 families in the developing world are already using small, household solar PV systems to power fluorescent lights, radio-cassette players, 12 volt black-and-white TVs, and other small appliances. These families, living mostly in remote rural areas, already constitute the largest group of domestic users of solar electricity in the world. For them, there is no other affordable or immediately available source of electric power. These systems have been sold mostly by small entrepreneurs applying their working knowledge of this proven technology to serve rural families who need small amounts of power for electric lights, radios and TVs.

The success of SHS implementation has been greatly determined by quality of the components and the availability of ongoing service and maintenance. When well-designed systems have received regular ongoing maintenance they have performed successfully over many years. However, when poorly designed components have been used, or when no after-sales service was available, systems often fail. Past failures of these systems has undermined local confidence. Fly-by-night salespeople have sold thousands of substandard SHS in South Africa, for example, which failed shortly after installation. Well-designed components and after-sales service and maintenance have become recognized as essential parts of a successful PV program.

Many of these SHS were provided by non-governmental organizations (like SELF) or through government-sponsored programs with international donor support, such as in Zimbabwe where 10,000 SHS are being installed on a financed, full-cost-recovery basis (in a program designed by SELF for the United Nations in 1991.) In Bolivia, 2,500 SHS are being leased to users by a cooperative "utility." In Kenya, over 20,000 SHS have been installed since the mid-'80's by independent businessmen on a strictly cash basis. The World Bank estimates that 50,000 SHS have been installed in China, 40,000 in Mexico, and 20,000 in Indonesia.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, 400 million families (nearly two billion people) have no access to electricity. The European Union's renewable energy organization EuroSolar estimates the global market for solar photovoltaic home lighting systems is 200 million families. Based on market studies in India, China, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Kenya conducted by various international development agencies over the past 5 years, the consensus is that approximately 5% of most rural populations can pay cash for an SHS, 20 to 30% can afford a SHS with short or medium term credit, and another 25% could afford an SHS with long term credit or leasing.

Back to top

A study for the U.S. government calculated that the gasoline equivalent of the energy saved over the lifetime of one 24-watt compact fluorescent bulb is sufficient to drive a Prius from New York to San Francisco.