The successful provision of energy services depends on the creation of resilient and reliable energy projects. Their resilience depends on the whole system’s ability to handle shocks and stresses, such as natural hazards and the effects of climate change. Meanwhile, the reliability of schemes depends on the on-going relationship between communities and technology. This can, in turn, contribute to broader community resilience. This webinar explores these interlinkages in the context of Nepal.
The webinar was jointly organised between Smart Villages, the UK Low Carbon Energy for Development Network, and the Hydro Empowerment Network – HPNET.
“Resilience is distributed, not centralized. The closer to the lowest common denominator resources, capacity and training can be located, the more resilient a community is” — Prof Ed Brown, University of Loughborough
This webinar focused on academic research and policy level interventions that are aimed at developing resilient and reliable energy projects. Dr Long Seng To will describe new research focused on improving community energy resilience. Dr To recently led a workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal which sought to understand opportunities enhance community energy resilience in grid, mini-grid and stand-alone electricity systems. Joe Butchers will present results from a study investigating the reliability of 24 micro-hydropower plants in Nepal. Findings showed that the reliability of community energy projects are variable, transient and depend on the interconnection of social, technical and economic factors. Jiwan Kumar Malik will outline the progress and planned future work of RERL in improving the reliability and resilience of new and existing community energy projects in Nepal.
Speakers:
• Dr Long Seng To: RAEng Engineering for Development Research Fellow at Loughborough University, UK
• Joe Butchers: PhD researcher at the University of Bristol, UK
• Jiwan Kumar Malik: Solar Power Expert at the Renewable Energy for Rural Livelihood (RERL), Kathmandu, Nepal
