Incorporating the institutions' perspective into a proposed model for assessing success of solar home system implementations

Abstract

Solar Home Systems can supply basic electricity services in Sunbelt countries. About 20 % of the world's population lack of access to these services. A preliminary model to evaluate the success of a SHS implementation has been proposed previously. The views of a range of institutional stakeholders related to SHS were explored by problem centered interviews and by participatory observation. An improved model of success is developed which is capable of providing a quantitative measure of success for SHS implementations. Five groups of key stakeholders have been determined. The most important self-set goals for the institutional stakeholders are profit, quality and social benefit. The most important success factors that encourage the achievement of self-set goals were retrieved and are discussed. Measuring the level of achievement of the defined self-set goals is the largest challenge in this process. The refined model of success demonstrates the complexity of measuring the success of Solar Home System implementations. The next phase of the research is to survey the Users' views on the SHS's success.