The South African (SA) government has a mandate to provide free basic energy to all its citizens. This is not always possible due to the high cost of supplying electricity to remote areas, thus resulting in rural communities waiting decades for energy connectivity. Islanded small-scale hydropower (SSHP) plants could be a feasible rural electrification option for supplying free basic energy to remote communities in SA. Such systems are usually designed to meet the peak demand and have excess energy dissipated by regulators and resistance units in lower demand periods. This creates opportunities to seek secondary uses from this dissipated energy to the benefit of the rural communities as the energy is primarily used for lighting and powering low consumption appliances.
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