SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAICS FOR SUSTAINABLE RURAL ELECTRIFICATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES; THE EXPERIENCES IN PERU

Abstract- It is nowadays accepted that solar photovoltaics represents for many rural areas in developing countries the only real possibility to get in the foreseeable future sustainable electrification, and improve so the livelihood of millions of people. Despite the availability of a mature technology of PV, however, only few successful projects of rural PV electrification are reported. The high investment cost of PV is normally considered as the main barrier, together with related problems like financing. The failure of many PV projects in rural areas of developing countries indicates however that there are also other conditions for a sustainable PV rural electrification. The experience of Peru has shown that there are several conditions, apart from the necessary financing, to make PV projects in rural electrification sustainable. This includes technical conditions, like a good quality control of all the components of the PV systems (battery, charge controller, etc.), as well as management and social conditions. Of particular importance is the involvement of the user of the PV system. We report here the experiences with different PV projects in Peru, especially with a very successful project of PV electrification with 421 Solar Home Systems (SHS) in the region of Titikaka Lake, mainly on the Taquile island. We think that an essential reason of the sustainability of this project is the fact that the SHS have to be repaid (eventually subsidized) by their users, converting them finally in the owners of the systems