Scaling Microgrid Deployment in Sub-Saharan Africa: Spotlight on the Role of Batteries

The Clean Energy Solutions Center, in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, hosted this webinar on scaling microgrid deployment in sub-Saharan Africa, where roughly 600 million people lack access to modern electricity services.

Grid extension remains prohibitively expensive in many rural areas, but decreasing solar PV and energy storage costs have created an opportunity for microgrids to be a part of the solution in closing that energy access gap. However, there are still barriers to scale, including the needs for continued cost reduction and advancements in how microgrids are designed and operated to effectively serve rural communities with affordable and reliable power.

The selection and operation of batteries in microgrids is important to overcoming those barriers to microgrid growth. Batteries make up a large percentage of life-cycle costs for microgrids, and best practices are still emerging for how to effectively deploy and manage batteries in this nascent segment of the microgrid space. The webinar included recent research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory on the role of batteries in microgrids and case studies from PowerGen Renewable Energy and Standard Microgrid. The webinar concluded with a question-and-answer session.

Panelists

• Eric Lockhart, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
• Ayomide Fatunde, PowerGen Renewable Energy
• Elisha Chesir, PowerGen Renewable Energy
• Matthew Alcock, Standard Microgrid