Modelling PV-based communal grids potential for rural western Kenya

Communal grids based on locally available renewable energy resources could be the bridge between national grid extensions and stand-alone power generations systems, offering least-cost paths to rural ‘electrification-beyond-lighting’ in developing nations. In this work the potential to supply electricity to a rural community in Kenya using PV-based communal grids is explored. Results show that for a properly sized system, gridding many solar microgeneration systems together leads to better power management, and thus efficiency, than when each system operates individually in a stand-alone configuration. Results further show that the higher the number of individual systems in each grid configuration, the higher the power exported to the external grid, and thus the better the power system management and efficiency.