Battery Size vs Photovoltaic Array ratio (kWH/KWP) - High night-time consumption

Modern energy services are crucial to human well-being and to a country’s economic development; and yet 1.2 billion people are without access to electricity. It is recognized that the central grid is unlikely to reach many remote areas in the near future: many of these communities will have low electricity consumption, making the costs of extending the grid unaffordable. Given the evident potential of solar energy for African countries, using stand-alone and mini-grid photovoltaic (PV) systems could be an alternative approach to meet the objective of universal electrification. This layer presents the ratio between the optimized battery size (kWh) and PV array size (kWp) for PV mini-grid using Li-ion batteries to store electricity (instead of the traditional lead-acid batteries) based on a low energy consumption pattern (most energy used during night-time). A higher ratio means that the battery size needed to satisfy the same electricity demand produced by the PV system is larger. Used in combination with other sources, these data can help governments, local authorities and non-governmental organisations to investigate the suitability of PV mini-grids for electrification of regions where access to electricity is lacking.