Less than 20% of rural households have access to grid-quality electricity services. Almost all people in rural areas use firewood for cooking, kerosene for lighting, and lead-acid rechargable batteries for household appliances. Energy use is inefficient, inconvenient, costly and environmentally unsustainable.

Residential energy demand in rural Cambodia

Most of the Cambodians living in the countryside are using car batteries for covering their basic electrification needs at home. A car battery provides them with enough energy to switch on a couple of lamps and a small TV for a limited time period each day.

Every 1 to 3 days they have to bring their empty batteries to their local battery charging station (BCS) to recharge for a small fee. The vast majority of those stations use diesel generators to charge the batteries of the nearby houses.

Delft University of Technology: Solar Battery Charging Stations in Cambodia