Solar Home System’s Success Analysis

Solar Home Systems (SHSs) are considered an option to supply the basic electricity dependent energy ser-vices to dispersed rural households in unelectrified regions of world’s Sun Belt. Recent experiences in China, India and Bangladesh have consolidated the view that for many applications solar PV is the least cost and the most environmentally preferred option for increasing access to electricity for rural households and small enterprises in these rural and remote areas. In some countries (e.g. Bangladesh) SHSs are considered to be successful but that is not the case in other places. There is a need to determine the success of SHSs and to find out what factors influence this success. The objective of this research is to determine the stakeholders understanding on success of SHSs, success factors and the barriers impacting on the success, the indicators of success and how we can quantify the success. To address the research objectives a desktop study is carried out to identify successful and failure programs. Based on this desktop research SHS’s stakeholders will be interviewed on their views on success of the pro-grams. This paper proposes a framework for assessing the degree of success of SHSs including a consideration of the key factors that contribute to success. In future work feedback from relevant institutions will be incorpo-rated in the process of developing the success framework and the relative importance of the various factors and barriers influencing the SHS’s success. It is proposed to develop a weighting system for these factors that can influence the success of SHS’s installations.