ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the hydroelectric and Solar Home Systems (SHS) components of REP I. Through the program, Laos managed to serve more than 65,000 rural households with hydroelectricity and supply off-grid SHS to almost 17,000 households. Moreover, as Laos is a least developed country (LDC), it faces a unique set of capacity and infrastructure-related barriers unlike high-income economies. Its government institutions and policies are in a nascent stage of development, and it lacks as the capital to finance, and at times even repair, power plants, transmission towers, transmission and distribution lines, substations, and transformers. But it has found ways and means to overcome many of these shortfalls, and the country offers lessons for how to provide energy access in the face of daunting technical and economic challenges. Before 2006, the World Bank's assistance came in the form of $97 million of International Development Association (IDA) grants for three separate electrification projects to extend grid-connected electricity to roughly 100,000 households.
