People in rural regions of various developing countries suffer on having no access to modern forms of energy, in particular electricity. This work is focussed on regions inhabited by these people and presents insights on the short financial amortization periods of solar home systems and photovoltaic pico systems. With amortization periods of about 6 to 18 months, pico systems represent a capitalized value of about 10 to 45 times the original capital expenditures at the point of full financial amortization. For a significantly higher electricity demand hybrid PV minigrids might be an excellent solution for rural electrification. However the economics are still a challenge. Based on excellent economics of small PV applications the total global residential small PV market potential is estimated to about 8 GWp and 80 bn€. The total PV-based off-grid market potential for the not yet electrified people might be estimated to about 70 GW and roughly 750 bn€.
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Werner et al. (2011) studied this question.
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