Off Grid Electricity Use on the Navajo Nation, Dr.Henry Louie

Speaker: Dr.Henry Louie, Seattle University
Title – Off Grid Electricity Use on the Navajo Nation

Abstract: Worldwide, over 700 million people live without access to the electrical grid. The majority of people afflicted by this form of energy poverty live in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. While significant progress has been in increasing electricity access in these regions, often overlooked is that in even so-called developed countries access to electricity is not universal. Presently, as many as 200,000 people living on Native American reservations and other Tribal Lands have no connection to the electrical grid. Small solar-based off-grid systems have been implemented on reservations as an alternative to grid connections. This presentation examines the electricity consumption characteristics of 150 off-grid solar homes on the Navajo Nation deployed by the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority. In particular, daily energy consumption is examined and the implications of this on off-grid system design are discussed.

Bio: Dr. Henry Louie received his B.S.E.E. degree from Kettering University in 2002, his M.S. degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004, and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington in 2008. He is presently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Seattle University. He is President and Co-founder of KiloWatts for Humanity, a non-profit organization providing off-grid electricity access and business opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2015/2016, Dr. Louie was Fulbright Scholar to Copperbelt University in Kitwe, Zambia.