Customer Agreement Considerations for Micro-Grids in Sub-Saharan Africa

Micro-grid deployment at a large scale will be necessary for achieving ambitious national and international electrification goals and reaching communities for whom grid extension is prohibitively expensive. The micro-grid industry is growing to fill this need, but barriers remain to reaching scale with sustainable, bankable business models. An important step along the way to industry maturation is creating customer agreements that serve as a foundation for a healthy, long-term relationship between developers, operators, and the communities their micro-grids serve. In addition to directly setting clear expectations with customers, a strong customer agreement can be a valuable tool for prospective funders, system sizing discussions, and customer retention. This report covers considerations for customer agreement design and content, and is intended to serve as a resource for micro-grid developers seeking to develop or re-design customer agreements to support growth and help achieve scale.