Consumer investment in watt-scale energy products

1.3 Billion people will remain without electricity without significant investment in new energy services. The IEA shows that about half of these services need to be distributed energy to reach those beyond the grid. Current investment focuses on centralized power plants and grid expansion. In the absence of public funding, the unelectrified rural populations must rely on private financing. In this paper, I compare the financial returns from watt-scale consumer products for lighting and mobile phone charging and the available financing for consumers from microfinancing. A comparison of the avoided cost in kerosene or phone charging and the monthly payment for a product shows that microfinance loan payments often exceed the avoided cost. Many customers are not able to tolerate these higher recurring payments even though in the future they will have no payments. In the developed world, innovators create instruments that eliminate upfront costs for energy services and immediately reduce consumer energy expenses. Equivalent innovation in this space could speed adoption of these technologies in the developing world as well.