EURICA

One Nanogrid of Nanoé in Madagascar

What are the concrete actions that will be implemented?

The EURICA project will embed 2 pilots project in which technological, sociological and organizational aspects will be enhanced to reach a better electrification strategy. The pilots respectively take place in Madagascar and Burkina Faso, countries where 24,1% and 25,5% of the population has access to electricity on average (World Bank, 2017).

The first one called “bottom-up approach” will achieve interconnection of several Nanogrids (i.e. small collective solar systems connecting 4 to 6 neighboring domestic users) within a village-wide balancing Microgrid. After a development phase based on a close cooperation between a French public energy engineering laboratory (G2ELab based in Grenoble) and Nanoé, the field testing will be conducted in the rural village of Ambohimena, Madagascar, which represents approximately 120 households in which over 75% of the habitants are cacao and/or rice cultivators with an average revenue below 800 $/hhld/year.

In this village, 90 users have already been connected to 20 Nanogrids. The field test will allow upgrading the electric service delivered to them and connecting a dozen of additional Tier-1 or Tier-2 users, and productive loads such as fridges, communal rice mill or drinkable water pumping and treatment plant. The second one called “top-down approach” will carry out an optimization solution for existing urban low voltage networks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. This solution will be based on smart meters and IoT. It will prevent power cuts due to local overloads by sharing the power the grid can really supply throughout the day and among the consumers accordingly to their needs and means. Moreover, a digital modelling will assess the insertion capacity of the grid and promote the consumption of local photovoltaic production in place of generators.