Re-mapping sub-Sahara Africa for equipment selection to photo electrify energy poor homes

This paper provides a missing integrated guide to budding middle class rural sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) homesteads trying to photo-electrify. It first estimates bare minimum requirements for these homes to start emerging from energy poverty. Guidance is given on optimal selection of the most important device for such homes: the light bulb. Along with other essential devices, this gives a daily electrical load of 500Wh, 42Ah at 12V DC. Building on earlier experimental work on validating TRNSYS in Cape Town, it extends usage of the software to the rest of SSA, aiming to recommend panel and balance of system component sizes to meet the above load all year round. Use is made of panel slopes derived in a related piece of work to formulate an optimisation model for selecting panel–battery–charge controller combinations. A survey of South Africa-made panels and components is done. Then, a method of solving the model is demonstrated by an example in Uganda which selects from the surveyed components to satisfy two alternative technical objectives of ‘least battery storage’ and ‘smallest panel size’. At each of the other 151 stations in SSA, the model is solved only for the first objective. The overall results are then mapped using MATLAB®. It is concluded that from a ‘smallest battery storage’ perspective, usable battery storage capacities in the region range between 70 and 360Ah, with the biggest being in equatorial/tropical rain forest areas of Congo basin and along the mid-western coastal areas. Panel sizes range between 160 and 275Wp. The dominant recommendation on charge controllers is 15A.

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