Mini hydropower as a decentralized renewable energy provider for developing markets – a screening stage of international market analysis

Abstract

Renewable energy implementation as one of the climate change mitigation actions requires key players such as Turbulent Hydro, a company that develops a reliable and eco-friendly vortex turbine micro-hydropower, to satisfy the niche demand of energy market of mini and micro hydropower. Such action is deemed as directly in alignment with the accomplishment of in order to accelerate the fulfilment of clean water and sanitization goal (SDG 6), affordable, reliable, and clean energy goal (SDG 7), infrastructure and innovation goal (SDG 9), and climate change action goal (SDG 13). In the quest of the fulfilment of such action, Turbulent started with international market selection. This study exist in order to help Turbulent in such process at the early screening stage, where the most attractive geographical market is selected based on market size of mini and micro hydropower, as it is suggested by Lyons, 2016. The targeted market is developing countries. Geographical selection of foreign market means also beyond a certain limit of geographical coverage, selling activities could become not profitable anymore due to the costs of transport (Vogel, 2021). A country selection means less opportunity of high sales, and more countries selection means non-adjacent countries factor that involves a possible higher cost of transport must be considered, which is not in the case of regional selection, as it hosts adjacent countries and provide more sales opportunity. Here is where the research questions appeared: which one is the best at the screening stage of international market selection for the most potential market of mini and micro hydro-power based on the market size in developing countries and what country/region is the best choice? These are the questions answered by the thesis report, by utilizing clustering and ranking method of IMS with the support of secondary data and validated survey data.