TE||Empowering villages
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导读
Mlinda Mini-Grids in Jharkhand
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听力|精读|翻译|词组
Empowering villages
给农村通电
英文部分选自经济学人Finance and economics版块
Mini-grids and development
小型电网及其发展
Empowering villages
给农村通电
New ways of producing and storing electricity could be a boon to poor people in rural communities
发电和蓄电新途径造福农村贫困户
A FORESTED village in Jharkhand state, eastern India, Narotoli is home mainly to adherents of Sarna, a nature-worshipping tribal religion. In more ways than one, it has long been off-grid. Drive past a police checkpoint a few miles away and you are in territory loyal to “the guys”, a euphemism for Maoist guerrillas. That makes Narotoli more marginalised than most places. A few months ago it became one of the last in India to benefit from a push by Narendra Moddi, the prime minister, to supply electricity to all the country’s villages. But the power lines are so “reliably unreliable”, says an Indian executive, that they might as well be washing lines.
Narotoli是印度东部恰尔肯德邦内的一个村庄，那里森林覆盖，Sarna教作为一种崇尚自然的部落宗教，其信徒多汇集于此。Narotoli曾多处不通电。如果谁开车经过几英里外的一个警察检查站，那么他就算是“那里的人”了，要忠于“那些家伙”，这是“毛派游击队（Maoist guerrillas）”委婉的称法。这样一来，Narotoli比其他地区更显得边缘化了。2017年9月，印度总理纳伦德拉·莫迪（Narendra Moddi）出台政策，大力帮助贫困家庭免费通电，实现全国村庄用电“户户通”，而最近几个月，Narotoli才受益于这项政策，成为印度最后一批实现通电的地区之一。但是，印度一位相关部门官员表示，所提供的电线十分“不可靠”，还不如晾衣绳。
注释：
1.euphemism ['ju:fimizəm] n.委婉说法
2.marginalize ['mɑ:dʒinəlaiz] vt.使处于边缘
Two years before the grid arrived, however, Mlinda, a social enterprise, had set up a “mini-grid”, a bank of batteries charged by solar panels and hooked up to homes, to guarantee round-the-clock power independent of the national network. Mini-grids are different from the rooftop solar panels and batteries (sometimes linked up in “micro-grids”) increasingly used in poor countries to provide LED lighting and to charge mobile phones. Narotoli’s 22.5-kilowatt mini-grid provides lighting to scores of homes linked by its poles and wires, as well as powering a seed-crushing machine for cooking oil, irrigation in the dry season and power for a poultry farm—all of which engender economic activity.
两年前，电网还没有设立。而一家社会企业Mlinda建立了一个“微型电网”，它由一堆电池组成，靠太阳能板充电，再接通到家庭用户，保证全天候供电，并且独立于国家电网。越来越多的贫困国家使用屋顶太阳能板和电池（有时连接在“微电网”上）发电，提供LED灯照明和为手机充电，但微型电网却不同于这两种发电方式。Narotoli的22.5千瓦微型电网通过连接的电线杆和电线可为几十户家庭提供照明，也可为一切经济生产活动供电，如榨食用油的碎籽机用电、旱季灌溉用电、家禽饲养场用电等。
注释：
1.round-the-clock 连续24小时，不分昼夜的
2.engender [in'dʒendə] vt.使发生
3.poultry ['pəultri] n. 家禽(鸡、鸭、鹅等的总称)；鸡类
The power generated by the plant is expensive (though it costs less than villagers often pay for alternatives such as kerosene for lighting and diesel for irrigation pumps). The worry is that demand for electricity may not be enough to justify the installation cost. As one Indian official recently scoffed: “Why provide a Ferrari to people who need a bullock cart?”
但这家发电企业产出的电费昂贵（尽管比村民们买一些电器替代品要便宜，这些替代品有用来照明的煤油灯，代替灌溉泵的柴油机等）。令人担忧的是，电力购买需求可能还不足以支付安装成本。对此，印度一位官员最近讥讽道：“为什么要为需要一辆牛车的人提供一辆法拉利？”
注：kerosene /'kerəsi:n/ noun. 煤油灯 a kerosene lamp 煤油灯
But Mlinda and other mini-grid installers see them as more than a way to satisfy existing demand for electricity: they are a way to catalyse development. The installers advise villagers on irrigation, farming and marketing to help them develop businesses that require reliable electricity, which in turn justifies the expense of installation. Vijay Bhaskar of Mlinda says a big mistake in development has been to assume that, once people are hooked up to electricity, businesses will automatically flourish. People have to be taught how to make the most of power, he says. “Bringing energy is the easy part. The hard part is finding productive ways to make use of it.”
但是，Mlinda和其他小型电网安装商认为这不仅仅是满足现有电力需求的一种方式，也是催化（村落）发展的一种方式。安装人员就灌溉，农业和营销方面，为村民们在有着可靠电力需求的商业发展上提供建议，反之也证明安装支出的合理性。Mlinda和Vijay Bhaskar说开发中的一个重大假设就是一旦人们接通了电力，企业便自然蓬勃发展。他说人们必须学会如何充分利用电力，“带来能量是最容易的，困难的是找到有效的方法来利用它。
注：
catalyse / 'kætəlaɪz/ v. To make a chemical reaction happen faster 催化，促成(chemistry) [ +reaction, formation, production ] 催化；促进 The wires do not have a large enough surface to catalyse a big explosion.导线表面积不够大，不足以引发大爆炸。
（正式） ( bring about ) [ +change, growth ] 导致；促成 The oil price surge of recent weeks has catalysed the latest falls in world markets. 最近几周的油价暴涨带来了全球市场价格的下跌。
This understanding is spreading throughout rural parts of South Asia and Africa, where mini-grids are increasingly seen as one of the most promising ways of connecting the 1.1bn people in the world who still lack access to electricity. The World Bank says users of mini-grids may need microfinance and vocational training to make best use of it. According to one British expert, “mini-grid operators are not sellers of kilowatt-hours; they are stimulators of rural development.” Jaideep Mukherjee, the boss of Smart Power India, an NGO supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, says their job is to “demonstrate the benefits, train and then propagate”.
这种认知正在南亚和非洲的农村地区传播，在这些地区，世界上仍有11亿人口无法用电，而小型电网越来越被视为连接他们的最有希望的方式之一。世界银行表示，小型网格用户可能需要小额信贷和职业培训才能充分利用它。据一位英国专家称，“小型电网运营商不是千瓦时的卖家;他们是农村发展的驱动者。“洛克菲勒基金会支持的非政府组织Smart Power India的老板Jaideep Mukherjee表示，他们的工作是”展示效益，培训，然后传播“。
Talk to Havil Bilung, a farmer in Narotoli, and the potential is clear. He says that with help from Mlinda, increased access to electricity has allowed him to use irrigation pumps to grow an extra harvest of pumpkin and okra in the pre-monsoon months, boosting his income. More crops have cut the number of young men seeking itinerant employment in the cities during the dry season. Women make mustard-seed cooking oil, which sells in Kolkata. An independent study for Mlinda found that GDP per person in eight villages with mini-grids rose by 10.6% on average over the first 13 months, compared with 4.6% in a group of similar villages without them.
与Narotoli的农民Havil Bilung交谈中发现小型电网潜力很明显。他说，在Mlinda的帮助下，增加电力供应使他能够提前在季风前的月份里使用灌溉泵来增加南瓜和秋葵的收成，从而提高收入。在旱季，更多的农作物丰收减少了在城市间四处奔波的年轻务工人员的数量。妇女制作芥末籽食用油，在加尔各答出售。在Mlinda进行的一项独立研究中发现，在前13个月期间，8个配有小型网格村庄的人均GDP平均增长了10.6％，相比之下，没有小型网络的类似村庄的人均GDP的涨幅仅为4.6％。
注：
1.pre-monsoon季风前
2.itinerant [i'tinərənt] adj. 巡回的；流动的 traveling from place to place
It is still early days. Mlinda struggles to teach business concepts (Mr Bhaskar notes that the local language does not even have a future tense). But the village is prepared to fork out 55,000 rupees ($800) on average a month—a small fortune—to keep the mini-grid running. In contrast, villagers say it is not worth paying the local utility for the unreliable grid, which they rarely use.
（偏远地区的小型电网）现在仍处于发展初期。Mlinda尽力讲授商业的概念。（Bhaskar先生表示当地的语言甚至没有将来时态。）但是当地村庄已经准备支付一小笔资金——平均每月5万5千卢比（约800美元），来维持这个小型电网的运行。相反地，当地村民则认为，为他们极少使用的、不太可靠的电网占用当地资源并不值得。
注：fork out v. 支付；放弃
Mini-grids are being set up at the rate of just 100 or so a year, from Myanmar to Mozambique. But the International Energy Agency (IEA), a forecaster, says hundreds of thousands of them could connect 440m people by 2030, with the right policies and about $300bn of investment.
从缅甸到莫桑比克。小型电网正在以每年大约100个的速度建立起来。。但是据预测机构-国际能源组织，随着恰当的政策和大约3000亿美元的投资，到2030年， 4.4亿人口将被成百上千的小型电网所连接。
African countries used to focus almost exclusively on expanding national electricity networks. Now some, including Nigeria and Togo, have started to prioritise mini-grids. Nigeria, which has the second-largest number of people without electricity after India, recently secured help from the World Bank for a $330m programme to encourage private firms to build 850 mini-grids, serving 300,000 households and 30,000 small businesses. It includes subsidies for initial outlays, and auctions to encourage lowest-cost bidders. Other promising markets include Kenya and Tanzania.
过去非洲国家几乎只关注国家电网的扩张，而现在包括尼日利亚和多哥在内的很多国家，开始优先考虑小型电网。尼日利亚拥有世界第二多的不通电人口，数量仅次于印度，它最近向世界银行寻求帮助，想启动一个3.3亿美元的项目来鼓励私营企业建设850个小型电网，为30万家庭和3万个小型商业活动服务。这个项目包括对于开办费用的补贴和鼓励最低成本投标人的拍卖费用。其他有潜力的市场还包括肯尼亚和坦桑尼亚。
注：outlay ['aʊt.leɪ]：（启动新项目的）开支，费用the money that you have to spend in order to start a new project
The experience of Engie, one of several big European power companies testing mini-grids in Africa, helps illustrate their impact. Juan Garcia Montes, the head of Engie’s mini-grid project, PowerCorner, which has 3,500 clients supplied by eight mini-grids in Tanzania, says his customers have not used access to electricity to start new businesses but to make existing ones, such as carpentry and milling, more competitive. Engie provides soft loans for energy-efficient machinery and teaches people how to use it (it was shocked to learn, for instance, that customers unplugged their fridges each night). About 20% of clients consume 80% of the electricity, indicating the importance of a few “anchor” users.
Engie是在非洲测试小型电网的欧洲大型电力公司之一，其行业经验表明了其在非洲的影响。他在坦桑尼亚拥有3,500个由8个小型电网供应的客户，Engie的小型电网项目负责人Juan Garcia Montes表示他的客户没有用电能来开拓新业务，而是使用（小型电网的）电力完成现有的业务，如木工和铣削，从而公司更具竞争力。 Engie为节能机械提供软贷款，并教人们如何使用它（例如，每天晚上客户拔掉冰箱时都会感到震惊）。大约20％的客户消耗80％的电力，这表明一些“锚定客户”即耗电量大的用户的重要性。
注：
1.milling：mill [mɪl] : (用磨粉机）碾碎，磨成粉 to crush or grind sth in a mill
2.soft loan：软贷款是条件优惠的贷款或可用本国货币偿还的外币贷款。世界银行提供的长期无息优惠贷款，贷款期限最长可达50年，一般每年只收取0.75%的手续费。贷款对象，主要是人均国民生产总值在680美元以下的发展中国家，尤其是低收入国家。贷款通常与特定项目相联系，并常常与世界银行的硬贷款混合搭配发放。
https://baike.baidu.com/item/软贷款/1777459?fr=aladdin
It can take seven years or more to recover the investment in a mini-grid, so developers need long-term certainty about electrification policies. They need information on licensing requirements, on tariffs and subsidies, and on planning—all of which can be political minefields.
一次小型电网投资回收期需要7年或更长时间，因此开发商需要长期确定电气化政策。他们需要有关许可要求，关税补贴以及规划的信息 ，所有这些都可能是潜在的政治雷区。
注：minefield ['maɪn.fild]：危机四伏的局面；充满潜在危险的形势 a situation that contains hidden dangers or difficulties
Firstly, standard licensing rules help with scale. If mini-grid projects need bespoke environmental-impact assessments or health-and-safety approvals, they become unviable. Secondly, developers need clarity about how much they will be able to charge their customers. If they are allowed to bill enough to cover their investment, that would usually mean poor villagers paying more than city folk for electricity. One way to equalise city and country tariffs would be to redirect the subsidies that utility companies get for extending the grid.
首先，标准许可规则有助于扩大规模。如果小型电网项目需要定制的环境影响评估或健康和安全认证，它们将变得难以为继。其次，开发人员需要明确他们能够向客户收取多少费用。如果他们能够被允许以高定价来收回他们的投资，那通常意味着贫困的村民将支付比城市居民更多的电费。平衡城市和国家关税的一种方法是重新引导用于激励公用事业公司扩大电网的补贴。
注：bespoke /bɪˈspəʊk/ adj. 定做的；预定的vt. 预约，显示出
Thirdly, mini-grid operators need to be informed well in advance of plans to extend the grid, to reduce the risk that their installations are left useless when the grid finally arrives. They also need clarity about technical specifications to enable mini-grids to connect to the grid if one day that becomes feasible. All this can be hard to arrange, because state-controlled utilities often see mini-grids as a threat to their monopolies and subsidies. It is helpful to have a government master plan such as the one in Nigeria, setting out where it is and isn’t feasible to extend the grid. William Brent of Power for All, an NGO, says that some large mini-grid developers, such as hydro-powered Rift Valley Energy in Tanzania, are linked by power lines to the national grid. He thinks that this model may become more common.
第三，小型电网运营商在进行电网扩张规划前，需有足够的信息（做好前期调查），以减小安装的设备处于未来闲置状态的风险。另外，清晰的技术规范阐述也有助于使得小型电网能顺利并入国家电网未来可行性规划。但是国有电网企业经常将小型电网视为其垄断和补贴的威胁，因此上述的一切都很难实施。那么制定一个像尼日利亚这样的政府总体规划是很有帮助的，它设定了小型电网扩展的区域，以及不能扩展的区域。非政府组织“Power for All”的威廉布伦特说，一些大型的微电网开发商，比如坦桑尼亚的水力发电的裂谷能源，通过电力线与国家电网相连。他认为这种模式可能会变得更加普遍。
Most mini-grids are green, unlike diesel, kerosene and coal- and gas-fired electricity. That is a welcome feature, though not the main aim, since the contribution of places like Narotoli to global warming is minuscule. Mlinda says it is during weddings that the locals most appreciate their new, reliable power. Near Narotoli, your correspondent saw a wedding and a funeral one evening, on the same street, powered by a mini-grid. As the sun set, electricity meters outside the houses cast an atmospheric green glow—the light of progress.
大多数小型电网发电都是绿色的，不像柴油、煤油、煤和燃气发电（带来环境污染问题）。尽管环保不是其主要目的，这也是小型电网广受欢迎的一个特点，，即便像Narotoli这样的地方对全球变暖的影响是微不足道的。Mlinda说，新的、可靠的能源在婚礼期间带来很大帮助。在夜幕下Narotoli的一条小街上同时举办着一场婚礼和一场葬礼，照亮这（古老仪式的）却是（现代能源象征的）迷你电网。当太阳下山的时候，屋子外面被电表笼罩着一层绿色的光晕——这是进步之光吧。
翻译组：
Neil, 男，外贸民工，经济学人铁粉
Yoga，女，政府行业，经济学人粉丝
sophia，女，教育行业，经济学人粉丝
Fiona， 女 ，教雅思的民工， 经济学人粉丝
Lucia ，女，翻译学硕士三年制，经济学人粉丝
校核组：
Emily，女，金融民工，经济学人粉丝
Leon, 男，研究生在读，经济学人铁粉
知识点收集组：
Jerry，女，广告jerry，经济学人爱好者
Cathy，女，大一财管狗，经济学人爱好者
Peony，女，体制内打工，经济学人爱好者
tessa，女 ，大一会计学生，经济学人爱好者
Mcylinder，男 ，石化公司员工，TE 爱好者
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观点|评论|思考
本次观点由Alan全权执笔
Alan，男，金融工程硕士，经济学人粉丝
关于电，全球七十亿人口中有有十亿缺乏用电来源，另外还有十五亿缺乏稳定的用电来源。所以今天讲一讲解决了十四亿人口用电需求的大国的电普及经验。中国对偏远地区电气化一共分两个阶段。第一个是在上世纪90年代末将电总普及率达到97%，农村地区普及率达到了80%。第二个阶段，解决剩余的3%人口缺电要相对困难得多，2012国家能源局颁《全面解决无电人口用电问题三年行动计划(2013-2015年)》终于在2015年将用电普及率达到了100%.
1.协调了所有利益相关方的诉求。中央政府制定了指示文件并提供资金支持，地方政府依照本省自身情况协调贯彻。其中中央政府建立的成本共担机制非常关键。2013-2015年，中央政府调动248亿给电网和光电系统，大约60%来自中央政府拨款，剩余部分由地方政府和国有企业承担。中央政府对不同省的拨款比例不尽相同，比如最困难的西藏，达到了80%。这里还有值得深思的是中央政府提供的稳定资金，对于在偏远地区建造无法收回成本的项目来说也非常重要。
2.选用了适当的技术。最后的3%电气化由电网扩展和离网太阳能光电对半组成。电网扩展技术虽然供电稳定但是对偏远乡村来说建立成本太大，每户人家的成本大约10万RMB,分布式和个体离网太阳能光电分别只需要9千-2万以及7.5千-1.12万。而离网系统还存在持续维护成本的问题，为此政府每月还会对其进行补贴。对极度偏远地区，政府会为居民在更适宜居住的地方提供新住房。给偏远地区供电要求在供电质量与成本之间作出权衡。
3.将电气化嵌进发展纲要中。将电普及放进扶贫战略中，主要是主要借助“村村通”计划，实现农村地区电力、公路、饮用水和电信通讯设施全覆盖。中国的“家电下乡”等政策逐渐提升了农村居民的用电需求，美国在电气化过程中也有过类似的政策。
也许用电紧张对现代大多数人来说已经很难想象了，但是这种电气化的经验对其他还没有达到100%普及用电的国家是个很好的启示，也对最近中国将电网项目远销全球的战略有很大借鉴意义。
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