In regions with no grid connectivity

In regions with no grid connectivity, deployment of small solar power systems can be a key short-term electricity supply strategy. Falling solar home system (SHS) prices (driven by decreases in the cost of photovoltaic panels and batteries) and several market approaches (including piecemeal purchasing strategies, micro-finance loans, and pay-as-you-go schemes) have increased off-grid solar systems’ affordability over time (Phadke et al., 2015). Research also indicates that a primary driver of uptake of off-grid power systems is desire for TVs (Jacobson, 2007). Use of highly efficient appliances could dramatically increase solar system affordability because efficient end uses can be served by a smaller system than would be required to power less-efficient versions of the same products. For example, a highly efficient color TV, four LED lamps, a mobile phone charger, and a radio that together require approximately 18W [W] can be supported by a small solar power system with 27W peak [Wp] (Phadke et al., 2015). In particular, flat-panel TVs, such as liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs, are appropriate for direct current (DC) power systems because these TVs inherently convert alternating current (AC) input to DC inside the system. As their prices and unit power consumption have dramatically decreased, these products have begun dominating global TV sales (Park et al., 2013a). Research also indicates that incremental costs and prices of efficiency in TVs have declined rapidly (Desroches and Ganeshalingam, 2015). Regardless, primarily because of high up-front costs, flat-panel TVs have received little attention for use with off-grid, household-scale, renewable leukotriene receptor antagonist systems, and the number of DC flat-panel TV products available in the off-grid market is limited. In some cases, off-grid households use inverters to enable residents to install widely available AC-powered TVs even though this results in power conversion losses (from DC provided by the energy system to AC produced by the inverter to power the TV and back to DC in the TV system. The efficiency gains from LED technology, which has been rapidly adopted in lighting products and TVs, could make off-grid solar power systems feasible and affordable in developing economies (Casillas and Kammen, 2010; Phadke et al., 2015). In this paper, we assess the technical potential and cost to reduce the electricity consumption of small LED backlit LCD (LED-LCD) TVs using commercially available technology and evaluate whether these TVs offer the potential to reduce the cost of TV use in off-grid energy systems. The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents an overview of the off-grid TV market. Section 3 discusses TV energy consumption trends. Section 4 describes our data sources, assumptions, methodology, and analysis results regarding the potential to reduce the cost of TV use in off-grid energy systems by improving TV efficiency. Section 5 presents our conclusions.
Overview of off-grid TV market An estimated 1.2 billion people worldwide lack access to electricity (the “un-electrified” population) and an additional 1 billion people have unreliable electricity access (the “under-electrified” population) (International Energy Agency (IEA), 2015). Of the global population, 17% is un-electrified. The majority of off-grid households are in sub-Saharan Africa and India (International Energy Agency (IEA), 2015). Although it is estimated that more than 80% of the world\'s households own TVs, TV ownership in developing countries is estimated to be low, e.g., less than 40% in sub-Saharan African countries (Digital TV Research, 2014). It is difficult to break down current TV sales between grid-connected and off-grid regions in developing countries, but we estimate that TV penetration in off-grid rural areas is low. LCD TVs are estimated to account for more than 95% of new TV shipments in both emerging and developed economies (DisplaySearch, 2014a; Park et al., 2013a; Park et al., 2014). In new TV shipments, cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlit LCD TVs have been replaced by LED-LCD TVs, which account for nearly 100% of LCD TVs (DisplaySearch, 2014a; Park et al., 2013a). Cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs were estimated to account for less than 3% of shipments in emerging economies in 2014, and no new shipments of these products were expected from 2016 onward (DisplaySearch, 2014b; Park et al., 2014).