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1. Introduction
There are four aspects to rural electrification: Historically the effort has been on design for micro-
government policy for uplift of community, economic grid and sustainable micro-grid, and a large literature
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rationale, electrical engineering, and compatibility has emerged on technological innovation and
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with society. electrical engineering . Engineers working in non-
governmental organisations, government remote
Regarding the social uplift component, the UN electrification departments and local utilities select
Sustainable Development Goals represent the and install robust technologies like hybrid RE, diesel
collective objectives for the global economy to generator micro-grids and, more recently, solar-
“achieve a better and more sustainable future for battery-light household systems. Most of these
all” as expressed by 193 signatory countries .This implementations are well-intended top-down
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assumes that electrification will result in better approaches that are developed by experts. They
quality of life and economic utility . Hence, there are created in accordance with the acquisitions of
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is a policy-making aspect to remote electrification . loans or grants in a haste to achieve the nationally
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The economic model for remote power engineering determined contributions.
projects is that the access to electricity will generate
economic development . The expectation is that the Unfortunately the experience is usually that the
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capital costs will be met by the Clean Development economic model is naive and the electrical engineering
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Fund or other mechanisms, which the community is technologically brittle (poor reliability) . The systems
will use to develop their economy through access become inoperable and residents do not pay.
to electricity, and the residents will then pay for the
electricity costs and equipment maintenance . The sociological aspects of remote electrification
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are therefore challenging. This area has received
However, the electrical engineering aspects of less attention than the policy, economic, and
delivering on government policies in developing engineering aspects. There is some literature in this
countries are extremely challenging when attempting area but overall there is need for better approaches
to provide electricity to the hinterland communities to include the societal component in remote energy
who are beyond the technically and economically development.
feasible reach of the grid .
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This paper develops a method to convert world
SDG-7 Affordable Clean Energy, which is the delivery views of remote communities into value systems for
of affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern electricity, and then link these to their likely economic
energy services for all by 2030 and a just, inclusive behaviours. The result is a conceptual framework
energy transition , , is a particular challenge for called the sustainability balance. As will be shown,
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the power utility engineers tasked with delivering the sustainability balance has nine ballasts, namely:
services to indigenous people living in remote biological capacity, social capacity, autonomy, equity
communities .
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