INVESTIGATING THE APPLICABILITY OF PHOTOVOLTAIC SOLAR ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES IN RURAL AND URBAN ELECTRIFICATION IN RWANDA

摘要

While electric power is widely available in the large cities of Rwanda, the rural areas are nearly free of any electric power supply. The districts of Kigali city are characterized by high home household with electricity as main source of lighting with more than 21%. In contrast other more rural districts show much lower rates. Grid access is varying from 0.3 to 63% in the different regions; where by the security of supply by the grid is still somewhat limited. Here the option of strengthening the supply by photovoltaic is discussed. This is based on a resource assessment applying the open database PVGIS, offering spatial and temporal on global solar irradiance derived from data of the Meteosat satellite. The long term annual average global irradiation in different districts is above 1700 kWh/m~2. This shows how the locations of Rwanda are favorable for application of PV solar system. Together with the help of other tools RETScreen and WetSyn the monthly of global irradiance is derived using hourly resolved data, at different locations in Rwanda is derived. This will be linked to the potential of PV modules energy application for the population in both the urban and the rural areas.