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Energy. They expressed support for the team’s plans for trying out a solar mini-grid model in Kenya. The Kenya Power official mentioned above, took the initiative to several meetings with the team leader, after hearing about the project through one of the Kenyan team members. He was eager to link up with the team and combine his ideas about solar power with the ideas and plans of the team, because he saw potential synergies of such cooperation.

Thereby, he became a natural person to invite for the event in India in 2010 and was later taken up as team member. Two other Kenyan government officials were also invited to India, but they could not attend.

Team members visited the REA during the early phase of the work in Kenya, and asked whether the planned pilot could fit under the support-mechanisms for off-grid renewable energy projects. They answered that they do support such projects, but not research projects. Team members also visited other government agencies, including Arid Lands Resource Management Project and NEMA (National Environment Management Authority). Meetings or conversations in workshops were also held with development agencies and NGO’s (including Norwegian Church Aid’s East Africa office and GTZ), renewable energy organizations and companies (Solar Net, KEREA, Sollatek, Kenital Solar, Telesales, Sun Transfer, Westlite Solar, and others) and university representatives.

The early parts of the planning and discussions on the practical project, both with the team members and others did not touch much upon the specific aspects of the model to be implemented in a Kenyan village. The focus was rather on how it could be possible to implement it, where in Kenya it should be done, with whom, and financed by whom. There was also mention of who could follow up the pilot project in the long term perspective and who could potentially replicate it.

The main outputs of the meetings were mutual exchange of information and awareness of each other’s work, and creation of linkages with some of the people met. A county level representative for the Ministry of Arid Lands in Kitui later became an important contact for the planning at the local level. The interaction with various actors in Kenya outside the team continued over time, but to a smaller extent and in different ways than during the first three years, and it became more oriented towards sharing of results.

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6.2.1. Characteristics of the project implementer

While the Indian project implementer was a government agency, a research team was here in charge of the activity. Network formation and cooperation between different kinds of actors has been pointed out as important in relation to socio-technical experimentation and learning processes, in terms of having team members who represent both the established socio-technical systems (regimes) and the emerging ones (niches) (Hoogma et al. 2002, Loorbach and Rotmans 2010). The team described here was not heterogeneous in this sense since all participants could be seen as “niche actors”. However, it was so in terms of being international and trans-disciplinary, and bringing together different kinds of background experience within the fields of solar PV and rural electrification. Some team members had good insights in conventional electrification, but did not represent interests or organizations within that area. A “regime” representative (a representative of the established system for power supply in Kenya) later joined the team on his own initiative, and became important.

The eleven (later twelve) team members represented organizations or consultancy companies in India (one), Kenya (five, later six), Austria (one) and Norway (four). These included four practitioners, five social scientists and two who were a combination of these.

Among the Norwegian and Austrian participants, the social scientists were in majority, and among the Indian and Kenyan participants, practitioners were in majority. Several of the practitioners had significant experience with implementation of power supply of different kinds, in many countries (India, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, South Africa, and other countries).

According to this research, it would not have been reasonable to develop and implement a social science led technology project in Kenya without such practitioners. There was no equipment supplier in the team, since this was not seen as relevant, although the option was explored as part of the work to raise funding for equipment. The main idea was to purchase the equipment in Kenya as part of embedding the project in ongoing work in the country.⁵¹

6.2.2. The visions and objectives for the solar power supply model

Development of common, guiding visions and expectations for the short and long term perspectives has been pointed out as an important part of strategic activities for socio-technical experimentation and innovation (Brown and Vergragt 2008, Loorbach and Rotmans 2010). Team members in this case joined the team because they shared interest in ideas formulated from the outset of the project. The common aim was to develop and implement a solar mini-grid model in Kenya, based on learning from the Sunderban solar mini-grid model.

The team would then adapt the model to the Kenyan context, in close cooperation with a village community. In addition to this plan, the team shared a vision that the Kenyan model would provide an example that could be replicated or built upon in Kenya, and even in other countries. Team members also had more general visions about a green and equitable future, which would thereby be radically different from the current state of the global society. The

51 One of the Kenyan team members changed from focusing mainly on academic research to becoming a business person importing a specific brand of solar lanterns and home systems. He promoted these products to the team, and the team gave him a chance to try out a few lanterns as part of the project, but the villagers preferred other kinds of lanterns.

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use of solar power could be one of the solutions that could help to solve pressing problems of poverty and vulnerability and lack of environmental sustainability. Electricity access for a large number of people was a central part of this overall vision. A sense of urgency was present, which is pointed out as a driving factor for stimulating processes of trying and learning (Brown and Vergragt 2008). The team shared these main visions from the start of the project, according to their statements during the first project meeting.

Other ideas and visions supported by the participants from the outset were that technological change for future sustainability has to be adapted to everyday practices and requirements that come up under daily use. Such adaptation of technologies to social life could also inform the development of institutional frameworks that could support the use of new technologies (Ornetzeder and Rohracher 2005). The Kenyan model developed by the team could contribute to a diversity and variation of possible solutions for more equitable and green energy systems for the future.

A technology specific approach was seen as useful and necessary in order to explore and understand specific options for future energy supply. Solar PV technology used at the village or community level was suggested before inviting the team members. Everyone who joined the team did so in awareness and support of this choice. The local community in Kenya that was invited to work on the project was informed about this focus, and supported the idea of exploring how they could benefit from the abundant solar resource of their area.

Despite such initial choices and “closures” for the project, there was still space for being innovative and for having an open approach, because little, if anything, was decided about the details of the Kenyan solar mini-grid model. For example, it was not yet decided which kinds of electricity services the solar power supply model would provide, how many people could be reached, which sizes of solar installations that could be suitable, how large investments could be possible, or who should operate the power plant. The common challenge for the team was to find suitable answers to these questions by developing a socio-technical design that could suit, and solve typical challenges found in existing cases, including the Sunderban example. The personal motivations of each team member was both the guiding visions mentioned above, and work opportunities through project funding and business.

6.2.2.1. Objectives for the qualities of the power supply model

In addition to the common visions and open questions to explore, the team also had some more specific objectives or visions for the desired qualities of the power supply model, which seemed to be largely in common from the outset. These can be seen as more operational visions than the more general and overarching visions mentioned above. The objectives were not much discussed in themselves, nor clearly defined. Some goals were mentioned in the initial project description, and thoughts came up underway. But there were long-standing considerations during the project period on what the model should look like. These were implicitly based on objectives for the kinds of qualities the model should have and how these could be achieved – i.e. what the objectives would mean in practice. The team members mostly shared the following seven objectives, which had commonalities with the aims of the WBREDA officials in India and many others actors in the same field.

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Firstly, the power supply model should provide affordable electricity services for people and in other ways ensure broad access to the services. This was talked about in terms of how the solar power supply model could provide services that would be available for as many as possible of the community members, preferably all, regardless of their economic situation or their geographical placement in a village. However, there was also an understanding that it might be unrealistic to reach all. Broad access would also mean that people of both genders, at different ages and in different life situations could be able to utilize the electricity in ways that could be useful for them.

Secondly, there was much interest in developing a model that would be economically self-sustaining. This means that the power supply should generate enough revenue to cover all necessary costs of operating and maintaining the local power plant in the long term perspective. A potential surplus could be saved for expansion (to reach out to larger areas and more people) and other improvements of the system. A surplus could alternatively (or in addition) be used for community purposes (general improvements in a village). Economic self-sustenance was seen as important in order to give economic independence for those people or organizations that operate the system. They should be independent in the sense that they could pay their expenses through their own funds. Dependence of funds from others for operation and maintenance could give delays in maintenance activities, or funds might be unpredictable or stop coming, and thereby create serious problems and breakdowns.

Thirdly, the model should of course also be viable in all other ways. Practical, well-functioning operations and maintenance was talked about in terms of good and manageable daily routines that should be created for and by the staff/operators and that the economic transactions should be done in an orderly and transparent way. The training of the staff should be done in a suitable way, the system should be technically robust, people’s use of the services should be done in ways that would not undermine the system, and the staff should have easy access to spare parts for the technical components. This is sometimes called operational sustainability.

Fourthly, there was agreement in the team that it is important to take very seriously both the gender aspects and the local and national context. Women’s participation and expression of views should be actively encouraged. The local and national context (and other contextual factors) should be studied and built upon, to make the model meet those needs and utilize those opportunities that would appear within existing energy policies and activities.

Fifthly, a modest investment level was also talked of as an important aspect. This was connected to energy efficiency in the technical design, which was also important in itself.

Modest ambitions for the kinds of electricity services to be provided was seen as necessary in terms of choosing those electricity services that give much value for many people for low investment. And finally, it was, as mentioned above, seen as important to create a model/pilot project that could be possible for others to repeat/replicate. A hope was that it should be possible to replicate it in large numbers, “scale it up”. Replicability was understood as depending on most of the aspects of an energy model, because problems on one key aspect could be enough to make replication difficult. There was an anticipation that a pure commercial model could not be achieved if it was going to provide important services to many people in a place where most of the people are very poor.

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These guiding principles remained almost the same underway in the gradual development of the solar power model, although they gradually became more specific and clearly articulated through the discussions on the details of the model. The different goals were also emphasized differently by different team members and other involved people, and this led to vigorous discussions on many aspects of the planned power supply, and a struggle to deal with dilemmas. For example, some participants were more concerned about economic sustainability than others, while some were more concerned about specific social services that would benefit the community, but that might not sustain themselves economically.

The objectives, or guiding principles, can be summarized as shown in the table below.

The first column of the table shows the objectives for the socio-technical design (or social organization) of village-level electricity systems. The second column refers to related, broader aspects of the energy systems and their context, including issues of social equity. The same column also mentions various concepts of “sustainability”, which are included because such more general concepts are commonly used in the theoretical and empirical literature, as mentioned in Chapter 3.

Table 7. Visions or guiding principles used by the project team, and how they relate to issues of distribution, social equity, and other aspects of sustainability, and contextual factors.

The team had some awareness that the fulfillment of such goals was not going to be straightforward. Knowing earlier projects, including the case studied in India, the challenges met had often hindered the achievement of such goals. The team was also aware of potential dilemmas between some of the goals, as found in the Indian case. However, there was much optimism among the team members that the project, given the research based, context sensitive approach, the various experts in the team, and the learning from India, that some of the challenges seen in other projects could be possible to solve.

Desirable qualities of a local electricity

system General themes of social equity and

sustainability

1 Broad access to the electricity services Access, equity, gender, economic opportunities (social and political sustainability)

2 Economic viability/sustainability,

expandability Business model/economic design

(economic sustainability) 3 Well functioning operations and

maintenance Practical workability, the role of local actors, operational details (organizational/institutional, technical and political sustainability)

4 Gender and context sensitive planning,

implementation and operation Gender equity, embeddedness in context,

marginalized groups, poverty, adaptation to national framework conditions (all kinds of “sustainability”) 5 Modest investment level Cost effectiveness, energy efficiency (environmental

and economic sustainability)

6 Replicable/scalable system Likely to depend on most of the other aspects as well as supporting policies and other broader system innovation

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