Electrifying the last mile in Uruguay

Uruguay has an electrification rate of 99.8%. Yet, there are about 3000 households in the country that have no access to electricity. Veronica Perna, Santiago Sanguinetti and Andreo Benech utilize OnSSET  in order to identify the least cost rollout plan for bringing electricity in the last mile in their country. Supported by Administracion Nacional de Usinas y Transmisiones Electricas ( UTE ), Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining , and UNDP  they participated in the 3-week OnSSET training course that took place in ICTP Trieste, Italy. The training covered lectures and hands-on sessions on OnSSET and other relevant topics such as geospatial data collection, management and visualization.

“As delegates of the National Direction of Energy-Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining-, and national utility Company of Uruguay - UTE – we consider  OnSSET as a powerful tool that helps us to improve our day to day work.
 
Uruguay has established a long term policy under the “Rural Electricity Program”, to achieve a 100% rural electrification rate by 2020
 
The training focus in deepening the knowledge about strategies to develop better investment plans to meet electrification goals of the country.

Also, knowing and sharing the mechanisms that exist in other countries, as well as lessons learned, represents an excellent opportunity to make proposals for changes and improvements to current actions.
 
In this way, we think that the application of geospatial tools, like OnSSET, is a reliable and cost-effective way to support electrification efforts in areas of the country that need it.”