When More Than Money Talks: Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis of Fuel Cells for Sustainable Power Supply in Sub-Saharan Minigrids

Abstract

Strategies of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa include minigrid deployment in order to progress towards providing access to electricit y to the currently 500 million people living without access in rural areas by today. While recent st udies on fuel cells in such minigrid energy systems are limited to technical and economic considerat ions, this paper performs a mult i-criteria decision analysis to compare their fit into the economic, technical, environmental, and social system against established fossil and renewable power generat ion technologies. Findings from scenarios which shed light on 1. strategically important criteria according to academic expert opinions capt ured in a survey, 2. decisive criteria for act ual market penetrat ion of power generat ion technologies in the respect ive sett ing and 3. fut ure parameter and criteria in alliance with sustainable development, indicate the fuel cell to be highly suitable for rural power generat ion in minigrids. The major disadvantage of low economic performance of decentralized hydrogen product ion and usage by fuel cells in minigrids could be overcome by large-scale centralized water electrolysis. But as reliabilit y of supply and synergies to other end-uses are promising, the authors suggest to direct fut ure work to define economic niches and use-cases for decentralized hydrogen product ion in minigrids.