Energy profiles for Kyrgyz mountain villages as a basis for a targeted energy strategy

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Engineering - Power Engineering, grade: 5.5, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, language: English, abstract: Clean, reliable energy is an important factor for any village or areas development. Despite this, 1.2 billion people had no access to electricity and 2.8 billion people relied on traditional biomass for cooking and heating in 2016 according to the International Energy Agency. One of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals states that by 2030 everyone should have access to clean, sustainable energy. In light of this, the aim of this project was to design a methodological approach to appraise the energy situation in a Kyrgyz mountain village in order to make it possible for that village to work towards the energy targets of the Sustainable Development Goals in a clear, focused way. To do this, two surveys - a questionnaire and an observational survey - were developed that included all energy related topics such as reliability, affordability, availability, quality and cleanness of energy as well as energy efficiency, and percentage of renewable energies. The advantage of these surveys as a profiling method is that it is able to be used across a wide range of landscapes, energy situations and demographics. With it a clear picture can be painted as to what the energy situation is and what steps would have to be taken to ameliorate the situation. The surveys were tested in a pilot run in a village called Jergetal, where the researchers spent ten days interviewing 16 households and taking notes and pictures on the state of the buildings and any energy efficiency measures or renewable energy technology. The survey results showed that while all the households had access to electricity, the heating and cooking was mainly done with fire fueled by coal and dung bricks. The houses were not insulated and no renewable energies were being used. The main reasons for this was lack of information and lack of funds. According to the evaluated surveys, next steps would be to work on energy efficiency, doing courses in insulating houses with local materials and teaching villagers how to build energy efficient stoves. The survey itself will be handed over to the local partners for further developing and testing.