Kizilcec, V;
Parikh, P;
Bisaga, I;
(2021)
Examining the Journey of a Pay-as-You-Go Solar Home System Customer: A Case Study of Rwanda.
Energies
, 14
(2)
, Article 330. 10.3390/en14020330.
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Abstract
Solar home systems (SHSs) are successfully addressing energy access deficits across the globe, particularly when combined with pay-as-you-go (PAYG) payment models, allowing households to pay for energy services in small instalments. To increase energy access, it is vital to understand the PAYG SHS customer journey in depth. To aid this, the paper presents unique data from active customers, consisting of structured interviews (n = 100) and two focus groups (n = 24) across two districts in Rwanda. These results are presented under a novel customer journey framework, which describes all the individual stages a customer might experience, including awareness and understanding, purchase, usage, upgrade, recommendation and retaining or switching energy source. The paper reveals that the customer journey is non-linear and cyclical in nature, acknowledging that a household operates in a social network within which they could influence or be influenced by others. It also highlights the growing importance of SHS recommendations in raising awareness of SHSs, pointing to the shifts in the off-grid energy market environment where customer awareness no longer appears to be a main adoption barrier.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Examining the Journey of a Pay-as-You-Go Solar Home System Customer: A Case Study of Rwanda |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.3390/en14020330 |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/en14020330 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | solar home systems (SHS); framework; pay-as-you-go; customer journey |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Civil, Environ and Geomatic Eng UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10118794 |
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