Village Power '98

This is the fifth Village Power workshop sponsored by NREL. We have held these meetings every year since 1993, to focus, challenge, and provide a forum for interaction among practitioners working in the field of using renewable energy technologies as an economically viable pathway to electrification of rural populations throughout the world. Starting with a small group of 30 colleagues in 1993, this ''workshop'' has doubled in size every year. When the NREL staff was planning for this meeting, they were hoping for something around 400 participants. We are now looking at over 500, and we apologize for the somewhat cramped accommodations. This overwhelming response, however, shows that the use of renewable energy to solve some of the world's serious problems is coming of age. This meeting, this ''conference'' (it's clearly no longer a workshop) marks a transition. A transition from the viewpoint that renewables are, and forever will be a technology of the future; to the reality that renewables have come of age. We have technologies available today, at today's prices, that can make a substantive contribution to the pressing needs of environmentally sustainable development in the world. This is a collection of all the papers presented at themore » Village Power '98 conference.« less