{Distributed Generation for Access to Electricity: ''Off-Main-Grid'' Systems from Home-Based to Microgrid}

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Title{Distributed Generation for Access to Electricity: ''Off-Main-Grid'' Systems from Home-Based to Microgrid}
Publication TypeBook Chapter
Year of Publication2013
AuthorsMandelli S, Mereu R
Book TitleRenewable Energy for Unleashing Sustainable Development
ISBN Number9783319002842
Abstract© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013.Addressing the issue of rural electrification means contributing to poverty alleviation for one billion people in the World. The traditional approach for increasing electricity access in rural areas is grid extension, nevertheless large parts of these areas have low accessibility, low values of load demand and load factor. For these reasons, grid extension often results to be economically unfeasible. In this case Distributed Generation systems become the most appropriate technology option since they can be installed close to the load, they can be sized in order to best fit with local load demand, and they can be fuelled by local resources (i.e. renewables). This chapter introduces Distributed Generation (Paragraph ''Electrification: the parabola of Distributed Generation''), it proposes a definition and a classification of Distributed Generation tailored to developing countries (Paragraph ''Definition and classification for developing countries''), it presents the context of rural areas which are the targets for electrification strategies based on ''off-main-grid'' systems (Paragraph ''Energy in rural areas: the target context for ''off-main-grid'' systems''), and finally it describes the main technical features and parameters that characterize ''off-maingrid'' systems (Paragraph ''off-main-grid'' systems).
DOI10.1007/978-3-319-00284-2_4