Evaluating the sustainable operation of community-owned and community-operated renewable energy projects is complex. The development of a project often depends on the actions of diverse stakeholders, including the government, industry and communities. Throughout the project cycle, these interrelated actions impact the sustainability of the project. In this paper, the typical project cycle of a micro-hydropower plant in Nepal is used to demonstrate that key events throughout the project cycle affect a plant’s ability to operate sustainably. Through a critical analysis of the available literature, policy and project documentation and interviews with manufacturers, drivers that affect the sustainability of plants are found. Examples include weak specification of civil components during tendering, quality control issues during manufacture, poor quality of construction and trained operators leaving their position. Opportunities to minimise both the occurrence and the severity of threats to sustainability are identified. For the micro-hydropower industry in Nepal, recommendations are made for specific actions by the relevant stakeholders at appropriate moments in the project cycle. More broadly, the findings demonstrate that the complex nature of developing community energy projects requires a holistic consideration of the complete project process.

840 million people living in rural areas across the world lack access to electricity, creating a large imbalance in the development potential between urban and rural areas. Pico-hydropower offers a cost-effective way of accessing electricity, where the resource exists. This paper discusses and critically examines several challenges that remain in implementing pico-hydropower systems, such as local manufacturing, maintenance and repair of turbines, low-head solutions, dealing with variation in the water flow between seasons, the ability to deal with income generating loads and low system power and capacity factor. The solutions to many of these problems exist; several low head turbine systems are appearing on the market, and new power electronic packages are able to improve the system capacity factor. Some turbines are now being designed for local construction using design for manufacturing rules, so only basic workshop tools and process are required to build turbine systems and components, and enabling turbines to be locally repaired. Through the commercialisation and implementation of these solutions, the proliferation of pico-hydropower systems can take place providing low cost sustainable electricity for remote communities, but this requires a stronger emphasis in social awareness and policy. Three critical enabling factors for the success of pico-hydropower projects are identified through this analysis: understanding the local context, financial sustainability and stakeholder awareness.

In rural Nepal, micro-hydropower plant mini-grids provide renewable electricity to thousands of communities but the plants often have poor financial sustainability. Widespread uptake of electric cooking in such communities is currently not feasible due to high peak loads and limited capacity. In this paper, we develop a Remote-Areas Multi-Energy Systems Load Profiles (RAMP)-based stochastic techno-economic model for evaluating the economic viability of off-grid communities and improving their financial sustainability by introducing new appliances, productive end uses, and demand-side management measures. The model can be used to understand community electricity demand, assess economic status, determine equitable and profitable tariff structures, and plan new connections including electric cooking promotion or new industrial machines. Detailed electric cooking load modelling functionality was developed to represent Nepali cooking practices, scalable to approximate widespread uptake of electric cooking, and adaptable to other cookers and contexts. The model showed that a payment structure based on electricity consumption rather than a flat tariff could increase the income of a case study community in Eastern Nepal by 400%, although increased monthly payments for certain households from NPR 110 (USD 0.93) to NPR 500–1100 (USD 4.22–9.29) could present difficulty. However, households could reduce their electricity consumption and a more equitable tariff structure could be chosen while preserving plant profitability. The number of industrial machines such as mills could be doubled and up to 40 households provided with electric cookers if demand-side management measures were introduced.

Due to slow expansion of the national grid, many rural areas of Nepal depend on micro-hydropower plants to provide electricity to homes and businesses. Micro-hydro turbines are designed, manufactured and installed by small and medium sized enterprises based in Nepal. After a plant is commissioned, its technical and economic operation is managed by selected members of the local community. When problems affect the plant, people are forced to rely on traditional or fossil fuel-based technologies to provide light to their homes, whilst many businesses cannot run without a supply of electricity. A study of 24 sites (18 Crossflow and 6 Pelton turbines) looked to identify the combination of technical, social and economic factors that affect the performance and reliability of plants. Interviews were carried out with plant operators, plant managers, and consumers to understand how the plant is run and managed, and the position it occupies in the local community. A quantitative assessment of maintenance and observation of 10 sub-systems was conducted at each site. The information collected demonstrated that the social and economic impact at home and in the community mean that micro-hydropower plants are highly valued. However, it was found that 40% of managers reported that monthly payments were not always sufficient to pay for repairs. By combining information on the domestic and commercial end uses, financially threatened sites have been identified. At the sites with trained operators, a higher quality of maintenance was found. Across all of the sites, problems at all sub-systems which could weaken performance and increase running costs have been identified.