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How can we pick up the pace in expanding access to electricity, clean water and safe sanitation globally? How do we leverage the opportunities from innovations that can function off the grid? When should we deploy stand-alone solar power kits, decentralized desalination plants, or onsite sanitation solutions; instead of building more pipes and stringing more wires? The SEI Initiative on Gridless Solutions is addressing these questions.
PV mini-grid in Mpanta, Zambia. Image: Oliver Johnson / SEI
Decentralized, modular, “gridless” options are increasingly seen as valuable complements to grid-based systems for providing basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity. Development has accelerated in recent years thanks to the rapid pace of innovations in electricity, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sectors.
New technologies and services can be deployed onsite, and they can operate in stand-alone ways. Despite the promise of these innovations, gridless technologies face significant barriers. Hindering further development and expansion are a host of issues – among them, regulatory mismatches, inadequate understanding about end-user expectations, and a lack of both financing solutions and sustainable business models.
The SEI Initiative on Gridless Solutions aims to help address these barriers. The Initiative is exploring cross-sectoral analyses of gridless technologies as a socio-technical phenomenon. It will conduct case studies that analyse on-the-ground deployment experiences.
Initiative / The Gridless Solutions Initiative explores alternative technologies for the delivery of critical services like energy, sanitation and freshwater.
Project / This project upscaled off-grid WASH innovations to enable sustainable and circular innovations to reach vulnerable populations in humanitarian crises.
Initiative / The Gridless Solutions Initiative explores alternative technologies for the delivery of critical services like energy, sanitation and freshwater.
Project / This project upscaled off-grid WASH innovations to enable sustainable and circular innovations to reach vulnerable populations in humanitarian crises.
Media coverage / SEI's Olle Olsson speaks on the transformation of electrification to development of off-grid innovation in the WASH sector on the "Inside Ideas" podcast.
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