Challenges for Renewable Electricity in Dcs

Abstract

As a necessary requirement of industrial growth and social development the commercial provision of electricity supply within developing countries is one of the most urgent areas for policy-makers to address. If sustainable development objectives are to be met then it is important that cleaner energy technologies are encouraged and their commercialisation fostered. This paper illuminates the key issues relating to the development of renewable electricity technologies within developing countries. Generally it is shown that the characteristics of renewable electricity technologies mismatch with the structural and regulatory features of the power supply industry. It is argued here that technological change allowing greater efficiencies of power generation at smaller-scales and availability of low cost information and communication technologies (ICT) for more sophisticated control and monitoring of the electricity system provides technical opportunity for deploying renewable electricity technologies within the local distribution system. For developing countries where the need for investment in transmission and distribution is typically large, this may provide large cost-savings. However experience within industrialised countries indicates that far-reaching structural and regulatory change is necessary if the value of distributed generation is to be recognised. Such change has proved difficult within these countries, and for developing countries where a number of institutional constraints compound the issue of reform, there are likely to be even larger barriers to restructuring and regulatory change necessary to allow the commercialisation of RETs.