Access to electricity is crucial for sustainable economic development. Yet 1.3 billion people around the world live without basic access to electricity.

Many of these peoplerely on unhealthy, polluting kerosene lampsfor nighttime lighting. Those with access to electricity in the developing world often rely on coal- or diesel-based grid power. Thus electrification is both a humanitarian issue and a climate issue. Access to electricity improves health, education, economic development and overall quality of life. But electrifying populations by expanding an already dirty and unreliable grid greatly would increase carbon emissions — by an estimated 141 percent in Sub-Saharan Africa and India by 2040 under business as usual.

That’s the current energy ladder. It’s not only far too great a leap for the unelectrified to reach the other end, but the world can’t afford for them to reach the other end by burning more fossil fuels. And although many people are forecast to gain electricity access in the next 20 years in the developing world, population growth in those regions will offset almost all of it.

RMI经理罗伊·托伯特（Roy Torbert）说：“今天的系统为整个发展中国家的农村穷人提供了权力。”“我们有望在2030年拥有尽可能多的人，而没有像今天这样的权力。需要一种新的方法。”

因此，对太阳能的关键需求。分散的太阳能提供清洁，可靠，低碳电力，并可以为大小社区提供动力。一个新的基于太阳能的能源梯子，每个梯级都可以触及下一个，可以使家庭和社区能够摆脱能源贫困，从而支持经济发展，并最终停止煤炭的扩张。

它将始于太阳能灯笼，转到太阳能家用系统，然后转移到迷你烤架，并最终转向社区规模的微电网。借助社区规模的微电网，您可以实现真正的商业 - 缝纫机，木板车床和其他生产用途，超出了太阳能灯笼和太阳能家庭系统的能力。

底部梯级

超过2.5亿户家庭（PDF）使用煤油进行照明。这对每天呼吸煤油烟的妇女和儿童产生了毁灭性的后果 - 相当于每天抽两包香烟（PDF）。幸运的是，世界各地的许多企业家在太阳能灯笼上取得了令人印象深刻的成功，这些灯笼比煤油灯笼提供更好的光，而没有任何有害的烟雾。D.light, a company that manufactures affordable and rugged solar lanterns自2006年成立以来，已有62个国家 /地区售出了超过900万个太阳能灯。

五十灯笼国际is a nonprofit organization providing solar lanterns to people in communities torn by poverty, war or disaster. Its current program is working with a group of 7,000 Ugandan grandmothers who lost their children to AIDS and are now caring for their orphaned grandchildren. “For only $50 we can provide a grandmother with life-changing solar light that will help prevent open flame burns and toxic fumes,” said Fifty Lanterns executive director Linda Cullen.

其他组织专注于小型太阳能家庭系统。这些系统（从10到100瓦）中，人们可以点燃房屋，充电手机并运行一两个小设备。这些系统已证明负担得起的融资, even to people earning under $2 per day. Yet this is where the current solar ladder breaks down.

While it is important to start small for affordability, there needs to be a way to grow. Being able to add solar panels modularly and having standardized solutions to create interoperability between systems will create the ability to transition from solar home systems to solar mini-grids or微电网。

The top rungs

Modular solar mini-grids are exactly whatDevergy是一家在非洲工作的荷兰公司，已在坦桑尼亚的几个村庄部署。这些迷你招募的电力家庭和六个村庄的小型企业，将800个客户连接到清洁，可靠的太阳能。

“After seeing many unmaintained solar home systems traveling through South America, we realized we needed to create a system that is interactive,” said Gianluca Cescon, cofounder of Devergy. “Through smart meters we can monitor what’s going on.” Devergy decided it could have a greater impact by linking many solar home systems together, and after many prototypes came out with the mini-grid it uses in Tanzania today.

“Using a modular system, designed to be interoperable and durable, communities can tailor their power supply to their individual needs, and grow their solar and battery systems according to the most relevant demands,” said RMI’s Torbert.

Bridging into even larger, community-scale microgrids will enable development that supports quality of life and countries’ economic aspirations, and halt coal's expansion into these to-be-electrified parts of the world. “We need to bridge the gap between household or small business use and more energy-intensive productive uses such as rice milling and corn milling,” said Devergy’s Cescon.

The太阳电灯基金(SELF) also has moved towards community-scale microgrids. “SELF spent years installing solar home systems in countries around the world. And it really helped change the lives of thousands,” said Bob Freling, executive director of the Solar Electric Light Fund. “But if we want to get to the next level of increased economic opportunity, we need to look beyond solar home systems to larger community scale microgrids.”

SELF’s前两个太阳微电网将动力amicroenterprise center in Haiti以及哥伦比亚的学校，卫生诊所和微型企业设施。通过为更大的设施和更多的能源密集型企业提供动力，太阳能微电网使个人，企业和整个社区都可以发展和蓬勃发展。

本文首先出现在RMI出口。