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THE great development economist Alexander Gerschenkron, expected that developing nations would catch up by making use of new technologies that were unavailable when rich nations were developing.
The digital technologies offer even greater advantages than those Gerschenkron had in mind. Now it is possible for developing nations to jump beyond the rich nations.
The point is made obviously in telecommunications. There is no need to go through the expensive process of building a ubiquitous network of wires and cables.
A wireless telecommunications system is cheaper, quicker and needs no modification for broadband applications. The same wave of change is coming to power networks.
Electrifying rural Pakistan will not be accomplished by extending the problem-plagued national grid, with its old, centralised generators, its transmission losses and its unpaid bills and uncovered debt. The new technologies promise modernised, 21st century villages without wires.
Pakistan is already leading in small-scale hydro-electric systems. But not all villages have access to hydro-power. To electrify many of its villages, Pakistan needs to accelerate its application of solar-powered to supply whole villages or clusters of villages, developing the micro-grid technologies that will also be needed.
The problem is that some of the new solar powered technologies needed are not yet mature. They need a push, more a nudge. That will not come from developed nations, where these new technologies only add to existing networks at the margin.
The breakthroughs must come from early adopting nations like Pakistan where these disruptive technologies will change the game completely.
But before discussing the challenges to be overcome, it is important to enjoy the good news. The new electricity options are being driven by quickly declining prices of both solar generation and electricity storage.
Taking the lead is not something Pakistan should do because it is clean and green but something it will do because it is cheaper and more efficient.
Electrifying rural Pakistan will not be accomplished by extending the problem-plagued national grid, with its old, centralised generators, its transmission losses and its unpaid bills and uncovered debt. The new technologies promise modernised, 21st century villages without wires
Consider data from the US Department of Energy, showing that prices for photovoltaic systems are tumbling, falling between 9pc and 21pc since 2013, depending on the scale. Prices of small-scale installations are falling fastest.
US residential installed PV power is at $4.27/kW and projected to fall to $2.50/kW. That will make it far cheaper than the fully amortised cost of installed, traditional, centralised power systems.
But the game changer right now is what’s happening to energy storage. Battery technology is what will make solar-powered micro-grids viable. Australia’s CSIRO suggest that lithium ion batteries, currently the cheapest at $570/kW hour, will be at $360 by 2025 and $190/kWhr by 2035. Zinc bromide and molten salt are both projected to be competitive.
These price declines are dramatic. They are mostly being driven by the demands from rich nations where solar generators are mainly clusters of a few PV panels on residential rooftops and they feed relatively small amounts of power into large, robust grids.
What is needed is serious attention to building and operating stand-alone, small-scale so-called micro-grids which supply power to multiple users but are unconnected to the national grid. This is where Pakistan can lead.
The point is that setting up stand-alone, islanded micro-grids, creates problems that are both different and more acute than occur when solar generation is added to the edges of an existing grid.
The major problems are related to regulating the frequency of the system, which in turn affects it stability and reliability.
In plain language, the inherent weakness of a micro-grid run on PV power is easy to grasp. Imagine an afternoon, the sun is shining on a small village in Mankera of District Bhakkar where solar potential is great.
Imagine the micro-grid users are responding to the abundant power being generated by running pumps and other equipment in addition to home lighting, computers in the schools, etc. Then a monsoon cloudbank looms up.
Suddenly power output falls by two-thirds while the load stays where it is. The short-term imbalance varies the system frequency. That causes disruptions at least. It can create a ‘meltdown’ of critical infrastructure or damage to users’ appliances.
In more technical language, maintaining grid reliability requires precise synchronisation of voltage and current. Unmanaged variations of loads or generation create imbalances and degrade the power factor or worse.
There are further problems associated with batteries. There are multiple standards and new types of batteries and equipment are emerging all the time. Without appropriate safeguards disasters are possible.
Micro-grids can suffer from thermal runaway so that the imbalance increases the batteries’ temperature and that creates conditions that raise temperatures further, leading usually to destruction of the battery.
Other problems arise if the installation or upkeep of the micro-grid is poor. For example, flooding can be a problem in villages. Everyone knows that water and electricity are a bad mix, water and batteries are even more so.
The simple message is that micro-grids need to be more robust than stand-alone PV systems. But none of these problems is insurmountable. Indeed, many of the problems have been solved.
What is needed is to try these solutions, in combination, in situ: in short, to run a pilot programme in Pakistan. Three elements must be brought together: equipment and skills, a funding package and a test village. Here is the outline of a plan to do so.
Firstly, alliances are needed with engineers, both equipment suppliers and independent advisors to the pilot project. The technologies are sophisticated and involve not just network hardware but intelligent circuits which respond almost instantaneously to the load.
Fortunately, the processing units are reliable and can be monitored and often repaired remotely, by wireless connections. So technical people will only be needed on the ground during installation, when they would also impart the lesser skills needed for on-going operation to local villagers. Telemetry and telecommunications will be used to manage the network.
Secondly, a funding package must combine resources from villagers, government and donors. That is only possible if clear contractual arrangements are in place. It will be necessary to devise a set of rules.
The rules will specify, monitor and enforce agreements that promote efficient and fair micro-grids. The agreements must create incentives for villagers to pay part of the cost of installing PV cells or to become users of the micro-grid.
The pilot programme must trial and develop these contractual arrangements. It is critical that assurances can be provided to governments and to aid donors who will need to contribute to the initial capital costs.
It is equally important that the communities served by the micro-grids lead the development of these arrangements themselves.
The last element of this next step is to bring the parties together. Late last year the Smart Villages organisation in conjunction with the Rural Support Programmes Network held a workshop which reviewed the limited experience of micro-grids in Pakistan, focussed on hydro-electricity.
It was attended by stakeholders from government, the Alternative Energy Development Board, and from academia and aid donors. It showed that Pakistan has the people to perform the leapfrog manoeuvre. Now is the time to build on that effort and add to it solar-powered micro-grids.
The writers are members of the Adelaide Alumni Research Network.
Published in Dawn, Business & Finance weekly, May 9th, 2016
