Elsevier

Energy for Sustainable Development

Volume 59, December 2020, Pages 189-198
Energy for Sustainable Development

End-user perceptions of success and failure: Narratives from a natural laboratory of rural electrification projects in Malaysian Borneo

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esd.2020.10.008Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We qualitatively evaluate off-grid projects from the perspective of end-users.

  • Outcomes are shaped by complex technical, economic and institutional interactions.

  • Perceptions of newer projects are heavily affected by past experiences of failure.

  • Qualitative studies can identify and address hidden barriers to electrification.

Abstract

Located deep in the Kelabit Highlands in Malaysian Borneo, the remote town of Bario offers us a natural laboratory of rural electrification projects through which to understand end-user perceptions of success and failure, and the factors that contribute to these perceptions. We use a case-study based approach and focus on three off-grid energy projects: a 110 kW mini-hydro power plant; a 12 kW wind turbine system; and a 1.59 MW solar-diesel hybrid system. We find that end-users primarily see the success or failure of a project in technical terms, but that this narrow conceptualization masks important interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors. We further find that end-user perceptions of newer projects are heavily affected by their perceptions of previous projects. Our findings suggest several ways forward to improve the effectiveness of rural electrification initiatives. Firstly, we should expect complex interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors and build-in the necessary capacity into rural electrification projects to identify and address these interactions. Secondly, there is no one size fits all solution to creating the requisite capacity to deal with interactions among technical, economic and institutional factors. Thirdly, ongoing qualitative or mixed-methods evaluations of rural electrification initiatives can help unravel what would otherwise be hidden interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors.

Introduction

Around 500 million people live in rural communities that are too remote to be reached efficiently through extension of the electricity grid. Instead, to provide electricity to these communities, a range of off-grid solutions will need to be implemented. A combination of technological breakthroughs and innovative financing models have led to increasingly widespread efforts to develop off-grid solutions to serve these communities across the developing world (Alstone et al., 2015; Holmes et al., 2015; Van Gevelt et al., 2018). One such example is in the state of Sarawak, Malaysia, where the federal and state governments have been working for decades to provide electricity services to 100% of their rural population by 2025. Central to this strategy is the installation of off-grid technologies to reach 428 rural communities (12,482 households) where grid extension is not feasible (Sarawak Ministry of Utilities, 2017). To date, around 300 of these rural communities have been served through either solar-diesel hybrid mini-grids, mini-hydro power plants or solar home systems (Sarawak Energy, 2019).

While the roll-out of off-grid technologies to remote rural communities in Sarawak is impressive, there is little understanding of both the extent to which end-users see these initiatives as successful and the factors that contribute to these perceptions. Gaining an understanding of end-user perceptions and their formation is important for at least two reasons. Firstly, such insights can provide rich qualitative evidence by which to better evaluate Sarawak's rural electrification efforts and ensure that resources are being deployed efficiently and effectively. Secondly, by exploring the factors that contribute to end-user perceptions of success and failure, we are able to unravel complex (and often hidden) interactions between technical, economic and institutional factors that affect the perceived success or failure of an off-grid renewable energy project. Not only are such findings of immediate relevance to Sarawakian rural electrification efforts, but a careful consideration of general learnings can suggest ways forward to improve the effectiveness of rural electrification (particularly off-grid) initiatives around the developing world (Van Gevelt et al., 2018).

Located in the Kelabit Highlands in Sarawak, the rural town of Bario has been and continues to be the site of numerous off-grid energy projects. These projects span a wide variety of technologies (solar, wind, hydro), operator models (community, utility) and scale (generation capacities of 12 kW to 1.59 MW). In one sense, Bario offers us what can be considered a natural laboratory through which to understand end-user perceptions of success and failure across a range of rural electrification projects. We use a case-study based approach based on the socio-technical systems framework to answer the following research questions. First, to what extent do end-users perceive these projects to have been successful? Second, what are the technical, economic, and institutional factors that have contributed to these perceptions of success or failure?

Section snippets

Rural electrification in Sarawak

Around 51,000 rural households in Sarawak remain without reliable and affordable sources of electricity (Sarawak Energy, 2019; Sarawak Ministry of Utilities, 2017). Many of these households are located in remote communities sited along rivers and streams deep in the interior, which are only accessible by a combination of Twin-Otter aircraft, four-wheel drive vehicles over logging roads, and boats through river rapids. This presents a formidable geographical challenge to providing electricity

Methods

We use a case-study approach to understand end-user perceptions of success and failure. We focus on three rural electrification projects in the rural town of Bario, which, while well-known anecdotally in the area, have not been the subject of rigorous investigation. Our data collection and analysis are informed by the socio-technical systems approach, which suggests that off-grid rural electrification projects need to overcome a range of technical, economic and institutional challenges to be

Results

For each of our three off-grid rural electrification projects, we first present our reconstruction of the planning, decision-making and implementation of each project. We then present our findings on end-user perceptions of success and failure. We do this by organising our end-user interview data into the three categories of challenges suggested by the STS approach: technical, economic and institutional.

Discussion

By using a case-study based approach focused on three off-grid energy projects in Bario, our study makes a number of important contributions to the literature that can translate into actionable improvements to the design, implementation and operation of rural electrification projects. Firstly, our findings provide compelling qualitative evidence that technically feasible rural electrification projects may need to engage with a range of unforeseen economic and institutional factors to be

Conclusions

The rural town of Bario in the Kelabit highlands has been and continues to be the site of numerous off-grid energy projects that span a wide variety of technologies, operator models and scales. Drawing on a novel combination of primary and secondary data, we used a case-study based approach focusing on three diverse rural electrification projects to engage with the following research questions. To what extent do end-users perceive these projects to have been successful? And what are the

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest and that the submission has not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Acknowledgements

We thank John Holmes and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. We are especially thankful to our interviewees and the community of Bario for their valuable time and effort. This work was supported by the University of Hong Kong’s Seed Fund for Basic Research (Ref.: 104005276). Ethical approval was granted by the Human Research Ethics Committee at the University of Hong Kong (Ref.: EA1903048).

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