Perriment, R;
Mergulhão, V;
Kumtepeli, V;
Parikh, P;
McCulloch, MD;
Howey, DA;
(2026)
Understanding long-term energy use in off-grid solar home systems in sub-Saharan Africa.
Energy for Sustainable Development
, 90
, Article 101896. 10.1016/j.esd.2025.101896.
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Abstract
Solar home systems provide low-cost electricity for rural off-grid communities. As access to them increases, more long-term data becomes available on how these systems are used throughout their lifetime. This work analyses a dataset of 1,000 systems across sub-Saharan Africa. Dynamic time warping clustering was applied to the load demand data from the systems, identifying five distinct archetypal daily load profiles and their occurrence across the dataset. Temporal analysis reveals a general decline in daily energy consumption over time, with 77% of households reducing their usage compared to the start of ownership. On average, there is a 33% decrease in daily consumption by the end of the second year compared to the peak demand, which occurs on the 96th day. Combining the load demand analysis with payment data shows that this decrease in energy consumption is observed even in households that are not experiencing economic hardship, indicating there are reasons beyond financial constraints for decreasing energy use once energy access is obtained.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Understanding long-term energy use in off-grid solar home systems in sub-Saharan Africa |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.esd.2025.101896 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2025.101896 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s), 2025. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Energy access, Solar, Clustering, Dynamic time warping, Load demand, Pay-as-you-go |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10218733 |
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