ABSTRACT
Back in the 1970s, the leaders of the terrestrial PV industry were aware that a very large population in Africa, Asia, and South America lacked access to electricity and that these people had little chance of ever having grid connections to centralized power generation. What they needed was distributed electric power generation which would then offer a tremendous potential for the PV market.Statistics clearly show this. World population has been growing at a very rapid pace. An estimated 275 million people inhabited this planet in 1000 AD. By the year 2000, the world’s population had increased to 6.1 billion. In 2012, the number was 7.1 billion and an estimated one-quarter of the world’s population (1.5-1.75 billion people) has no access to electricity. Population growth in recent years amounts to well over 80 million people/year.South Africa is a good model for how PV might be used in the rest of Africa when distribution and money problems are solved. Writing about South Africa, Neville Williams
observed:214 “As a consultant to Solarex, then (1989) America’s largest solar PV manufacturer, I learned that their biggest market for PV modules was South Africa. PV was widely used for telecommunication, wireless telephone, radio, and TV broadcast translators, railroad signaling, and lighting.”In the rest of Africa, a very large population lives under different conditions from South Africa. In sub-Saharan Africa, a large portion of the population has no electricity. In several countries less than 5% has electricity. In “better developed countries” 10% of the people have electricity. The power demand of those without electricity would be very low. They use kerosene lamps for lighting when it is dark but kerosene is both expensive and dangerous. Kerosene lamps can cause fire, destruction of property and injury, or even death. The PV industry was long aware of this situation but also recognized that missing distribution infrastructure of PV products and very low family incomes hampered their ability to sell products in these areas. We should not ignore that the world has changed during recent decades for certain technologies. Wireless communication, radio, TV, and telephone now reach even these remote areas of the Earth. Yes, telephone too. One can have good cell phone reception in remote places, such as the Darjeeling area in India. Wireless services rely on electricity. PV is excellent for this purpose. It is modular and thus available to small users. In the last 30 years, PV prices have decreased so much that, as described in Chapter 20 (Water Pumping), PV modules are not even worth stealing anymore.In 30 years, millions of people have gained electricity provided by PV, a distributor infrastructure has developed (for example, PV-powered water pumping systems as was shown in Chapter 20) and some of the developing countries have even became leaders in the PV business? How did this happen?Starting in the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, many efforts were made to help people in developing countries who lacked electricity to utilize PV. A broad range of organizations were involved. These included a fair number of NGOs such 214Williams N (2005) Chasing the Sun, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, BC, Canada.
