Papua New Guinea

The USAID-Papua New Guinea Electrification Partnership Activity (USAID-PEP) is a five-year project (2020–2025) with the Papua New Guinea (PNG) government to significantly contribute to achieving the goal of connecting 70 percent of PNG’s population to electricity by 2030. The country faces challenges as an island nation with dispersed population with technically complicated and cost-prohibitive grid expansion. Off-grid electrification is one of the main paths to support the country’s energy goals through expanding access to affordable, healthy, and stable power. ESG is part of a diverse consortium led by RTI International that comprises utility, off-grid, regulatory, private investment, and community engagement experts responsible for delivering this activity.

USAID-PEP is delivered through four main objectives:

• Objective 1: Demonstrate measurable increases in PNG Power Limited’s financial viability and operational efficiency.
• Objective 2: Develop viable off-grid electrification models.
• Objective 3: Demonstrate measurable improvement in PNG’s energy regulator.
• Objective 4: Catalyze private investment for energy projects.

ESG leads Objective 2 and supports Objective 1. For Objective 2, ESG has been focused on developing viable off-grid electrification models, brokering connections between stand-alone solar companies and potential customers, and building a portfolio of viable sites for off-grid electrification including mini-grid. Through this work, ESG is heavily engaged with the off-grid sector in PNG, including providing support for off-grid energy focused companies as well as donor programs, foundations, NGOs, medium and small enterprises, agri-businesses, cooperatives, associations, Members of Parliament, and financial institutions relevant to the off-grid sector in PNG. ESG provides technical assistance directly to off-grid energy focused companies and support business development activities for stand-alone solar companies. ESG also provides market intelligence to the sector through the PNG Off-grid Market Intelligence Briefing newsletters and catalog of quality-verified stand-alone solar products sold in PNG with their respective manufacturers and distributors in the country. ESG has also developed a stand-alone solar information sharing/business networking workshop for women-owned businesses in Port Moresby, bringing together solar companies and women and women-owned businesses potentially interested in selling quality-verified stand-alone solar products.

For Objective 1, ESG’s work has been focused on providing technical assistance to improve PPL’s (PNG Power Limited) financial viability and operational efficiency, implement the Performance turnaround Plan (PTP), and build capacity of local PPL staff. ESG has collaborated with PPL to develop a reliability performance framework to monitor PPL’s commercial and operational performance and to develop the reporting procedures, baselines, and benchmarks for the System Average Interruption Duration Index (SAIDI) or System Average Interruption Frequency Index (SAIFI). ESG has also worked with PPL’s teams to identify areas of focus to reduce outages unrelated to generation shortfall.