Electrication for “Under Grid” Households in Rural
Kenya: Five Questions for Ken Lee
By Sybil Lewis
In the summer of 2012, an interdisciplinary
research group at UC Berkeley set out to study
the demand for and effects of communitylevel, solar-powered microgrids in Western
Kenya. To the surprise of the members of
the group—led by Professors Edward Miguel
(Economics), Catherine Wolfram (Business),
and Eric Brewer (Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science)—they could not identify
many communities that were truly “off grid.”
There just always seemed to be an electricity
line nearby.
As a resul а