MES Highlights | MEC Newsletter2020-2

From Project to Systems – MES @ TU-Berlin

“Why is a country with one of the highest poverty rates in the world an interesting example of spreading solar energy in rural areas? How is Grameen Bank selling solar home systems to poor households in Bangladesh?”

Those were the two questions that founded the Microenergy Project which brought microfinance and renewable energy together in a research project at the TU-Berlin in 2002, the starting point for a research agenda hosted at the TU-Berlin, exposed to the world. The Global North can learn from the Global South how small-scale renewables can generate an impact on the energy supply in remote areas. We have to turn the world upside down to see where it is worth to understand better and to learn. With this perspective, we started Microenergy Systems as an interdisciplinary research approach that helped us to understand the technology, the economy and the systematic problems in the field of off-grid renewable energy supply. Until today, we have hosted eight conferences and symposiums worldwide (India, Colombia, USA, Germany); many PhDs have been accomplished and many more master and bachelor theses as well. Microenergy Systems (MES) is an interdisciplinary crystallization point for many researchers worldwide who commit their academic interest to the topic of small-scale energy systems in the Global South.

It became a knowledge generator for a better energy generation, and we appreciate that recently we have been joined by Prof. Christian von Hirschhausen, the new head of MES, with whom we will have our next international MES conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh - back to the roots.

2020: An important year for MES

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The Microenergy Systems Group (MES) has had a difficult but important year. Albeit Covid-19, the group was able to extend its reach to new, external members, and gained internal coherence by joining traditional researchers with new faces, mainly doctoral students and research assistants.

Some highlights (see our website for more):

The MES Graduate Program now includes three PhD students from the last cohort (Noara Kebir, Lia Strenge, Hannes Kirchhoff) as well as five newly registered PhD students: Raluca Dumitrescu, Georg Heinemann, and Nikolas Schöne (all TU Berlin), Naila Saleh (Pakistan), and Charles Muchunku (Kenya). Associated junior researchers are Fabienne Banzer and Florian Weiß. Our two MES/MEI Humboldt Fellows from the last term were successful in moving on to excellent PhD programs abroad: Vivian Ogechi Nwadiaru joined the graduate program of the University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA), and Tonny Kukeera joined Oxford University (Smith School for Sustainability), we are keeping close contacts.

A new research activity was launched, supported by ENGAGEMENTGLOBAL with funds from the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development: The Sustainable and Inclusive Global Mobility Initiative (SIGMI) aims to take a global micro-perspective on mobility and raise awareness about bottom-up and human-centric approaches in infrastructure development and transportation. Through online events, state of the art in different disciplines of scientific research in the field of sustainable mobility will be presented as well as inspiring research and practice projects. In participatory workshops, new initiatives will be developed by the participants. SIGMI is coordinated by Noara Kebir and Christian von Hirschhausen and relies on a research team consisting of Maja Assmann, Madhulika Rao, Xenia Ritzkowsky, and Lukas Barner. Follow-up activities are the Sustainability Week (late April 2021) and the European Mobility Action Week (Late August 2021).

Preparations are underway for the 2021 MES conference, which will take place in Bangladesh, digitally, March 2-4, 2021, under the title “Decentralized Electrification, Network Interconnection, and Local Power Markets – Assessment of Experiences and Ways Forward”. See Call for Papers.

Several research and consulting project proposals were submitted; hopefully, some of them will be fruitful, to strengthen the research focus and staffing.