Abstract

Most of the third-world rural areas, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, are still without electricity. The few existing off-grid and upcoming installations are remote and characterized by limited resources that call for drastic conservation measures. For the majority of these emerging consumers, lighting is the priority load. Rural electrical lighting load models are characterized by inaccuracies due to technical omissions, highlighted in this paper, and result in energy wastage. Solutions to the third-world problems need not follow similar paths to those of the developed world. In fact, cutting-edge technologies like the cell phone have already leapfrogged rural communications where expensive infrastructure had been perennially cited as the impediment. In this paper, another futuristic technology, the white light emitting diode (LED), for general lighting, is poised to create yet another revolution in African rural electrification.