HYBRIDELEC

The Hybridelec research is adressing the issue of the hybridization of electrification configurations in "Southern Cities" fuelled by the emergence of off-grid devices and logics of unachieved « infrastructuralisation ». By hybridization, we mean the coalescence – technically and politically complex – of various technical worlds of production, distribution and power consumption, of different scales, isolated or interconnected at the margin. Such processes are currently overlooked by research foscusing on rural electrification and research concentrating on new technologies implemented in a few spaces in big metropolis of the developping and emerging countries.

The research aims to assess the consistency and sustainability of the emerging energy configurations observed in and at the peripheries of a large number of so-called “Southern cities”, particularly with regard to articulation between conventional grid and alternative solutions. These perspectives inform the analytical framework to be presented below. Anchored in a socio-technical system perspective, it is built to help accounting for and understanding the various features and heterogeneous factors that are part of an electricity supply system working in practice.

We plan:

I) To empirically analyse how electrical transformations meet urban concentration and changing lifestyles by:
- characterizing hybrid configurations (types of actors, technical characteristics, business model, key factors of development or non-development…)
- identifying the criteria of stabilization of the local assemblages and barriers facing their sustainability;
- analysing the dynamics of extension/change of each part of the assemblage and paying particular attention to their interfaces with the conventional network (dynamics of substitution, of sustainable articulation, of transformation?) .

II) To examine the relation between these electrical transformations in urban environment of the South and the internationally promoted goals for a sustainable energy transition (ie decarbonisation and energy efficiency in context of low growth), that is :
- to analyse the share of renewable energies and of hybrid fuels in local configurations, and their effects on conventional electrical systems.
- to assess how local assemblage innovate and change to meet growing demands: what happen when rising incomes and consumption render obsolete frugal and green offers like solar home systems? Are they replaced by bigger individual systems and/or collective mini-grids, with what type of consequence on the use of primary energy sources?

III) To learn from these results in developing cities to enrich the dominant conceptualization of energy transition, which appears insufficient or too simplistic to integrate the diversity of situations observed. We propose to develop an approach to change that is less hierarchical and linear, to mirror the multipolarity of places that impulse change and the plurality of change trajectories.

Methodology
The research will rely on a qualitative methodology based on a combination of non-standardized data harvesting and semi-structured interviews with targeted individuals involved with the electricity supply and/or knowledgeable about energy in Southern urban areas (India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Chad, Nigeria, Benin, South Africa). While the majority of published analyses focus on a relatively narrow approach of the ‘enabling framework’ (legal and technical norms) that supports a transition towards clean and modern energy, our research is based on the assumption that broader social dimensions (human capacities, technical and entrepreneurial cultures) and geographical factors (localisation, type of urban settlements…) are also critical. Although harder to document and/or to verify they will constitute the real added value of our fieldwork.