Solar Power For The World's Poor
By 2020, the world's biggest potential solar markets could be in the developing world, areas largely ignored by the solar industry today, according to executives working to bring renewable energy to rural regions.
Just 1 percent of the world's solar panel production has been installed in developing countries, said Michael Eckhart, the president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, during a panel discussion Tuesday at the Solar Power International conference in Anaheim, California.
''This is a scandal for our industry and we must find solutions,'' said Mr. Eckhart, who has worked on solar projects in Africa and India.
The market in Africa, Asia and Latin America is potentially vast, given that nearly 44 percent of the population of the developing world lacks access to electricity, according to Simon Rolland, a policy and development officer for the Alliance for Rural Electrification, based in Brussels.
Therein lies a conundrum: Bringing solar energy to communities in these regions means building and financing solar arrays in remote locations that use batteries to store the electricity generated by the photovoltaic panels.
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