Scoping exercise to determine load profile archetype reference shapes for solar co-generation models in isolated off-grid rural African villages

For many off-grid rural communities, renewable energy resources may be the only viable option for household and village energy supply and electrification. This is especially true for many rural regions in southern Africa, where the population spread is characterised by small villages. These rural villages rely heavily on firewood, charcoal, biochar, biogas and biomass to meet thermal energy needs (hot water and cooking), while candles, kerosene and paraffin are mostly used for lighting. Alternative energy systems such as hybrid concentrated solar micro-CHP (combined heat and power) technology systems have been proposed as viable energy solutions. This paper reports on a scoping exercise to determine realistic hourly reference profile shapes for thermal and power energy consumption in isolated rural African villages. The results offer realistic energy consumption load profiles for a typical rural African village in time-series format. These reference load profiles enable experimental comparison between computer-modelled solar micro-CHP systems and control automation solutions in isolated rural village micro-grid simulations.