Policy Engagements and Blogs

Emerging Forms of Hybrid Energy Systems in Cities of the Global South

FULL VIDEO OF ROUND TABLE ORGANISED BY CPR, THE CENTRE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, SCIENCES PO PARIS AND THE AGENCE FRANÇAISE DE DÉVELOPPEMENT
ENERGY RESEARCH

Watch the full video (above) of the first session on ‘Electric Hybrids and Bottom up Approach’ featuring Eric Verdeil, Rémi de Bercegol and Marie-Hélène Zérah, as part of the round table on ‘Emerging Forms of Hybrid Energy Systems in Cities of the Global South’.

Cities in the developing and emerging countries experience many problems of electricity supply, including lack of access for all as well as irregular and load quality issues, which conventional responses such as solely extending the grid cannot fix. Therefore, collective and individual alternatives such as decentralised and hybrid systems evolve. The co-evolutions of local electricity supply systems and urban change create new modalities of supply made up of actors, technical objects, institutions, economic interests, social practices and representations. These forms of supply go beyond the traditional publicly provided services or innovative socio-technical solutions.

Various configurations of hybridisation can emerge ranging from more or less isolated (batteries, inverters, micro-networks) or interconnected solutions (smart grid systems for instance) that have operational and regulatory impacts. It then becomes important to focus future research on the under-studied mutations of these arrangements in urban and urbanising spaces and to evaluate their impact on the future of broader national electricity systems.

The second session on ‘Stakeholder Dialogue on Energy Transition and Indian Cities’ featuring Ankit Bhardwaj, Gaurang Sethi, Santosh Kumar Thakur and Augustin Delisle can be accessed here.

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