On Tuesday 4 and Wednesday 5 February 2020, EEG is hosting a Grid Reliability and Utility Operations conference in Accra, Ghana, and is seeking contributors through a Call for Papers.

The aim of the conference is to provide a forum for international academics and policy makers to showcase and discuss the latest research relating to grid reliability and utility operations in low- and middle-income countries. It will focus on the challenges these countries face in delivering reliable, sustainable electricity to customers.

Discussions about energy in the developing world often focus on the one billion people without access to electricity. Low access rates and insufficient installed capacity are fundamental issues that affect livelihoods and economic growth, and understandably, many initiatives and research projects are aimed at delivering new connections, as well as the new generation capacity required to support them.

However, less attention is paid to the reliability of supply and the operations of the utilities tasked with the day-to-day delivery of on-grid electricity. In many developing countries, urban access rates are relatively high (more than 75%). In these settings, the primary issue is reliability rather than lack of access. Yet few studies analyse the causes and consequences of outages, or the ways in which policy makers can address them.

Reliability is one of EEG’s priority focus areas, with several projects investigating ways of improving the reliability of electricity systems in developing countries. At the Grid Reliability and Utility Operations Conference, research from the EEG programme will be presented, and EEG is seeking other contributors through a Call for Papers.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• The costs and impacts of unreliable electricity supply

• The potential for new technologies to improve grid reliability

• The impact of utility models and processes on reliability

• The role of legal and political institutions in utility operations

• The costs and impacts of non-technical losses

• Remedial measures to address non-technical losses

• Power sector reform, tariff setting, and electricity market structures

• The monetisation of wheeling services, spinning reserves, and other ancillary services

• Dispatch diagnostics and steps to optimise dispatch

• Technical and human resource constraints facing utilities

Submissions are welcome from academics, including those from engineering, economics, business, and sociology, as well as practitioners.

Authors wishing to be considered should submit full-length papers (even in draft form) or abstracts via [email protected] by 1 November 2019. Accepted authors will be notified by 15 November 2019. There is limited financial assistance available in certain circumstances for authors to travel to the event. Please contact [email protected] for more information.