Improving community resilience through distributed solar energy as critical infrastructure – a case study of South Asia
International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment
ISSN: 1759-5908
Article publication date: 24 May 2024
Abstract
Purpose
The analytical framework proposed in this study aims to link the capital portfolio approach to sustaining human well-being, 2015 sustainable development goals and development action ARC-D concepts. Nepal case study is a “tribrid” power generation system that combines distributed solar, hydro and wind power generation capacities for the resilience of a community of around 500 people in a remote village with a total installed capacity of 28 kW. The second case study is about the solarization of 900 health centres in Chhattisgarh, India, with off-grid solar PV with a cumulative capacity of 3 MW.
Design/methodology/approach
Critical infrastructure at the community scale needs to be resilient to maintain community-level functionality in the face of adverse impacts. The present study provides two case study sites from Nepal and India to demonstrate various elements of resilience building for critical infrastructures, especially for the energy sector.
Findings
Granular technology and distributed generation in Nepal and India can act as critical infrastructure in providing on-demand electricity service to enhance community-level resilience along with future opportunities of scale up.
Originality/value
The analytical framework for evaluating community-scale resilience through critical infrastructure design and application of the framework using evidence based on case studies are the original contributions.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Joyashree Roy acknowledges funding support under EDIT-AIT project. EDIT-AIT project at the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, received funding from the Energy Demand Changes Induced by Technological and Social Innovations (EDITS) project, which is part of the initiative co-ordinated by the Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (RITE) and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) [and funded by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan]. Indrajit Pal acknowledges funding support under the Coalition of Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) fellowship (first cohort 2021–2022) of application number 210117487 and the climate innovation solution “Climate Resilient Infrastructure for Social Transformation and Adaptation (CRISTA)” supported under the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) Climate Innovation Challenge (CIC), funded by FCDO-UKAID and The World Bank.
Citation
Mohanty, P., Pal, I. and Roy, J. (2024), "Improving community resilience through distributed solar energy as critical infrastructure – a case study of South Asia", International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJDRBE-02-2023-0039
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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