Abstract
Many Ethiopians live below the poverty line especially Households in the rural area Because of that used the most extreme traditional energy use for cooking, lighting and heating. In most parts of the country in Ethiopia use kerosene and firewood for lighting.
This is the critical problem for rural community lighting the house modern technology’s it is extremely important to find the option to solve this problem. According to our country many scholars explain the most abundant energy source or potential was solar energy 13 months of sun shine. This study was aimed at investigating and estimating the potential of solar PV energy application across rural Ethiopia off-grid solar home system (SHS) for individual solar households and energy demand. The data was collected from nearest part of the study area Akaka kaliti sub-city Addis Ababa bole metrological agencies 8 years global solar energy data was took. Then, using empirical formula and 3 models which is called Leu and Jordan, KoronakisandBadescucalculate average solar energy potential of specific area was analyzes. The calculated result were 5.09Wh/m2 ,5.08 Wh/m2 and 5.06Wh/m2 for each model .To measure the needs of people's energy demand, we took 2 kebeles and 38 households and categorized in to three depend on the energy demand, namely small, medium and large. Then, the average energy demand resulted 111 watt, 327 watt, and 637 watt each of the categorized household. Then, compared the needs of each family's energy demand with traditionally used kerosene and cell battery for payback period and economic benefit the result was it takes pay 1, 2 and 3 years for each categorized energy demand. Therefore, electrifying rural community using SHM was the one and the only solution for sparsely populated Ethiopian farmers and villagers to reduce social, economic and environmental problems.
Key words: potential, payback, energy demand, solar home system (SHS)