USAID Partners with Johns Hopkins University to Support Off-grid Solar in Cambodia

Over the past several months, USAID’s Private Financing Advisory Network-Asia (PFAN-Asia) has been collaborating with a team of four graduate school consultants from the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) to research and develop a report, The Business Case For: Off- grid Solar in Cambodia.

The purpose of this study is to identify the characteristics of successful off-grid solar business models in similar, emerging markets, and understand how they might also succeed in the Cambodian context.  The research has highlighted two distinct business models that could be commercially viable:

1) Revenue diversified mini-grids, which are mini-grids that serve a combination of commercial and household clients with one or more anchor clients, deployed in geographies that do not currently have access to the grid, and

2) Custom industrial applications, which includes replacing or augmenting diesel-powered systems with solar wherever such systems are already in operation.  Building off their initial report, the SAIS team traveled to Cambodia in January 2015 to conduct additional primary market research, including customer surveys, interviews and other forms of data collection to validate and finalize their report.  It expected that the final report will be published in April, 2015.

Source: USAID/RDMA Regional Environment Office Weekly Update