The vast majority of Lesotho’s landscape is characterized by rugged hills and mountain ranges with sparsely populated rural villages, making it prohibitively expensive and financially unviable to connect these remote villages to the national electricity grid. This lack of access to electricity has hampered many social and economic developments due to insufficient provision of much-needed power to homes, schools, police stations, clinics and local businesses. This paper proposes a renewable energy hybrid power generation system for one such remote town of Semonkong, in Maseru district, Lesotho. The study is based on modelling, simulation and optimization of the hybrid power system using the load profile of Semonkong town and the available renewable resources data of solar radiation, wind speeds and water flow rates from the nearby ‘Maletsunyane River. The HOMER software is used to provide an optimal system configuration in terms of the minimum levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and the maximum renewable energy fraction, based on various renewable/alternative energy sources of solar photovoltaic, wind turbine, mini-hydro turbine, diesel generator and battery storage. Sensitivity analysis on solar radiation, wind speed, stream flow and diesel price is undertaken to evaluate the feasibility of a completely renewable power system suitable for this remote area application. Simulation results for the isolated optimized hydro/wind/PV/diesel/battery hybrid system configuration achieves LCOE of US$0.234/kW at a renewable energy fraction of 0.95. Thus, the diesel generator will always be required to augment power supply for Semonkong especially during the dry and cold winter months of May to September when the energy demand is at its peak but the solar radiation and stream flow are at their lowest.

Despite serious efforts of the Lesotho Government, Lesotho Electricity Company (LEC) and other stakeholders, the level of rural household electrification and affordability are still low. Whereas in 2015 about 72% of urban householdswere grid-connected, this was only true for 5.5% of rural households. Furthermore, the vast majority of rural households use fuel wood, while electricity use, where available, represents a small share of the domestic energy consumption. The LEC data shows that the average consumption per household has decreased by over 60%between 2001 and 2016 in urban households. This indicates that the bulk of new connections are to the rural poor households. This is plausible given that majority of households perceive electricity and other commercial sources of energy to be more expensive than the traditional biomass. Therefore, the paper discusses this existing status quo with regard to rural electrification using data from the major players such as LEC, Rural Electrification Unit and Bureau of Statistics.

The Lesotho government’s commitment to provide clean energy access to predominantly low-income rural communities through electricity grid extension is posing technical and financial challenges to all relevant stakeholders due to remote and hostile terrain, dispersed households, low population densities, over-dependence on subsidies, user affordability and declining revenue collection, among other complications. Policy interventions anchored on universal access fund and fiscal support to facilitate rural access to electricity have achieved an almost 10-fold increase in household customer base from ~25,000 in 2002/03 to ~220,000 in 2016/17. However, during the same period, average annual household electricity consumption has rapidly decreased by about 65% from 3,400 kWh to 1,154 kWh due to newly connected low-consumption households, using electricity mainly for lighting. Another off-grid approach based on stand-alone solar photovoltaic home systems in the country’s three highlands districts suffered a major challenge of social attitude, reliability and ease of use due to lack of local capacity and maintenance programme. This article therefore seeks to review alternative solutions for sustainable future provision of electricity/energy to rural communities in Lesotho based on the outputs of two national studies (electricity cost of service and electrification master plan) undertaken in 2017/18. The former study recommends introduction of lifeline tariff at 5.4 USc/kWh for the first 30 kWh/month for basic electricity needs of the poorest households and the accompanying cross-subsidization mechanism by higher income consumers. The latter study proposes a blended approach of grid extension (with low-cost dual or single-phase rural networks) and off-grid systems (based on stand-alone solar systems, fuel-efficient cook-stoves and hybrid renewable mini/micro-grids). For either approach, households in rural areas will be able to show improved affordability if “electricity market activation support mechanisms” do accompany electrification drives for productive use of electricity in activities generating income for rural communities and creating self-sustained local jobs

Provision of sustainable, reliable, affordable, and possibly clean energy is the primary aim of many developing countries such as Lesotho, which is endowed with renewable energy resources in the form of hydro, solar and wind. With the electricity demand in the country having an average annual growth of 5% while the local hydro generation has remained stagnant at 72 MW since 1998, sound planning and decisive strategies have to be implemented now to mitigate the growing peak demand deficit (currently at 50%) and ensure the right energy mix for future use. In order to formulate and support national energy strategies based on the recently adopted Lesotho Energy Policy 2015 – 2025 and to achieve its goal of ensuring security of supply, medium and long-term electricity demand and supply options forecasting studies are necessary. This article will address this electricity capacity expansion planning gap in Lesotho by providing quantitative analysis and cost-and-benefit trade-offs of different supply options based on operability constraints. Emphasis will be placed on local generation development based on renewable energy technologies (solar, wind, small-hydro) versus continued electricity imports from the Southern African region, using MAED and MESSAGE modelling tools. MAED will be used to model electricity demand while MESSAGE will be used for modelling supply options for the years 2016 – 2030.