Browsing by Author "McNamara, Marie"

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    Assessing Time-of-use Tariff Deployment For Mini-grids in Sierra Leone
    (2021-04-28) McNamara, Marie
    The declining price of solar energy and the development of reliable off-grid solutions presents an opportunity to embrace the use of community-scale mini-grids to improve energy access. However, solar hybrid mini-grid providers electrifying rural communities in Sierra Leone and across developing economies face difficulties securing energy demand and developing a tariff structure that customers can afford to pay and covers costs. Solar hybrid mini-grids only generate power during the day, and there is a cost disparity between supplying power during the day vs. the evening. Time-of-use tariffs can be a more efficient price structure and could be a means to lower the average cost of electricity for customers. A time-of-use tariff in which the daytime price for energy is less than the evening price of electricity could incentivize consumers to shift some of their energy demand from the evening to the day – when the system generates electricity. This study conducts a financial analysis to quantify the effect of time-of-use tariffs on energy demand, incurred costs, and revenue.
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    Can Time-of-Use Tariffs Increase the Financial Viability of Mini-Grids?
    (2022-10-26) McNamara, Marie; Plutshack, Victoria; Phillips, Jonathan; Poindexter, Nicole
    Declining solar and battery costs and increased operational efficiency have helped expand community-scale mini-grids, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where they now meet the power needs of over 47 million people. However, mini-grid system economics must continue to improve to be a reliable power solution for a significant share of the nearly 800 million people still lacking access. For rural, low-income communities with generally small power loads and significant demand variations, it can be challenging to align supply and demand while maintaining affordable rates and recovering investment costs. Time-of-use (ToU) tariffs—a rate structure where the tariff varies by the time of day that electricity is consumed—could represent one piece of the solution. This policy brief develops a model to estimate the effects of a ToU tariff on average costs and revenues using data from Energicity, a solar mini-grid operator in Sierra Leone.