Market development of PV Solar Home System (SHS) and PV pumping in Yemen

The Saudi-led coalition blockade of Yemen led to a severe scarcity in fuel which led the unavailability of electricity from fossil fuel based sources such as Public Utility and diesel based generators. Therefore, households and other energy consumers looked for all possible ways to get the power supply. Due to the disappearance of fuel, the installation of PV Systems was the best and survival solution. Consequently, rapid diffusion of Photo Voltaic (PV) Solar Home Systems (SHS) took place as well as PV Pumping. As a result of rapid demand increase, the PV SHS market suddenly emerged and experienced very high growth. As a result, most of the traders and even ordinary shops got into the business of selling PV SHS. Before the conflict, PV SHS sales were counted, in best cases, hundreds, now it has jumped up to hundreds of thousands. Thus, a large market for PV SHS was created within a year. This paper examines closely this phenomenon by means of market assessment using a pilot site survey that was performed on households, PV SHS dealers and PV Pumping dealers.