Sustainable rural electrification planning in developing countries: a proposal for electrification of isolated communities of Venezuela

Small-scale renewable energy technologies offer impoverished rural communities in developing countries the ability to overcome extreme poverty and improve their living conditions. Unfortunately, most presented frameworks for rural electrifications have not adequately addressed the three cores of energy trilemma. This paper proposes a methodology of rural electrification planning to overcome the three cores of the energy trilemma (environment, security and equity), considering four sustainability dimensions: environmental, technical, socioeconomic and institutional. The proposal is based on a review of the Venezuelan program “Sembrando Luz” (“Sowing Light”), developed between 2005 and 2013, through visits to 28 beneficiary communities. A set of lessons learned were used to define the methodological proposal developed here. This proposal establishes specific objectives for the achievement of sustainability in rural electrification programs, through a novel conceptual framework, valid for the achievement of universal access anywhere in the world. In addition, hierarchical criteria and a projects classification are proposed, which finally enables a projects portfolio to be designed according to the technical and financial conditions available in each country. As a case study, the planning methodology is applied to 2,269 isolated communities in Venezuela that still lack electricity. The methods and conclusions of this work are intended to be a contribution to the improvement of rural electrification programs with renewable energy in other countries of the developing world.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft