Final report for Review of the Outer Islands Electrification Programmes in RMI

The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) Outer Islands’ Solar Electrification Programme is Government‐owned and operated through the Ministry of Resources and Development (R&D). The operation and maintenance of this programme is carried out by the Marshalls Energy Company (MEC)under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Government (R&D) and MEC.

The existing outer island electrification programme for the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) can besummarised as: The supply and installation of solar home systems to the outer atolls via utility ‘fee for service’ model. The installation of systems has been through numerous funding mechanisms (e.g. REP5, US donors, Taiwan Donors) and will continue under the North‐REP. Currently there are approximately over 1600 systems and a further 1500 systems will be installed through North‐ REP. The number of existing systems is shown in Table 1 with the proposed systems shown in Table 2. It can be seen from Table 1 that there is a discrepancy in the actual number of systems depending on the data source.

 The supply and installation of six school systems (including connection to some health clinics) under the REP‐5 programme; with six more schools or clinics) proposed under the North‐REP program. The schools pay the utility for the electricity they use but an MOU between the schools and the Marshall Energy Company (MEC) states that the schools are responsible for replacement of equipment.