The principal aim of the study was to develop people-centered strategies for sustainable management of rural electrification that is based on the experience of a rural livelihood in Ghana. The concurrent mixed methods were used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data through interviews with sector experts, key informants and community members regarding the delivery, management and usage of electricity. The hybrid mini-grid electricity supply in Pediatorkope, an Island community in Ghana, was adopted as a case of rural electrification for this study. Seven experts (including heads of institutions, agencies and departments), seven community participants and 120 heads of households were surveyed through the administration of semi-structured questionnaire to retrieve the requisite data. Qualitative data was analyzed thematically with 2019 NVivo. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data in this study. Analysis such as central tendency including mean, median, maximum, minimum and percentiles were covered. Multi-dimensional analysis, principal component analysis, bivariate analysis standard deviations and frequency analysis were also carried out to ascertain the details of tiers of access to electricity, demographic characteristics of participants and attributes of electricity supply. The results reveal four level of institutional engagement and five stages of policy and regulatory growth from the colonial past to the sustainable era that have shaped the development of rural electrification in Ghana. Two categories of uses of electricity were identified as basic and regular services. Furthermore, exchange value, use value and sign values were identified as important value strands for application in rural electrification. Even though the mini-grid system was designed to allow Tier 5 of electricity access, the quantitative results revealed that the highest experience of access in the community was Tier 4 with the overall access rate of 35%. Supply side attributes such as capacity of supply, availability of supply and reliability affected access and usage of electricity in the community. Demand side issues identified were misuse of appliance and tariffs misapplication due to non-management of energy culture transition and characteristic additive nature of electricity demand and usage. The various findings based on the experience of electricity usage were consolidated in a proposed model known as multi-value mini-grid to address the identified challenges associated with the use of electricity services from the mini-grid. The multi-value mini-grid, as the name suggests, provides more than one value in a simplified model to meet the different energy needs of higher population of end-users with multiple streams of revenue generation, which enhances the financial feasibility of mini-grids and the livelihoods of the people.
Michael Acquah (Thu,) studied this question.