Archetypes of Rural Users in Sub-Saharan Africa for Load Demand Estimation

In the context of estimating the electricity demand of rural areas a set of archetypes of end users is proposed, in order to serve as input for off-grid energy planning models. The archetypes are proposed for residential users, schools and health centers and the set of archetypes is designed based on variation of latitude, climate zone and relative wealth of the user, with an applicability over the entire Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The nature of the archetypes is designed so that they can be integrated with both Energy System Optimization Models and Geospatial Electrification models. In the context of this work, they are applied to three case studies of off-grid system sizing in Nigeria, Kenya and Mozambique to highlight the flexibility of the tool.