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Distributed Generation for Access to Electricity: “Off-Main-Grid” Systems from Home-Based to Microgrid

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Renewable Energy for Unleashing Sustainable Development

Abstract

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-main-grid” systems (Paragraph “off-main-grid” systems).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Here DG keeps the general meaning given at the beginning of the chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Energy, UNESCO Chair in Energy for Sustainable Development, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Stefano Mandelli

  2. Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Riccardo Mereu

  3. Organization Engineering Without Borders-Milan (ISF-Milano), Milan, Italy

    Riccardo Mereu

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  1. Stefano Mandelli
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Correspondence to Stefano Mandelli .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Energy, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

    Emanuela Colombo

  2. UN Industrial Development Organization, Vienna, Austria

    Stefano Bologna

  3. UN Industrial Development Organization, Vienna, Austria

    Diego Masera

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Mandelli, S., Mereu, R. (2013). Distributed Generation for Access to Electricity: “Off-Main-Grid” Systems from Home-Based to Microgrid. In: Colombo, E., Bologna, S., Masera, D. (eds) Renewable Energy for Unleashing Sustainable Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00284-2_4

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