Stakeholders confirmed that the state delivers Timor-Leste's national electricity supply, with no private actors involved. The electricity system's power stations and transmission lines, including those being modernised through assistance from the Asian Development Bank , are shown in Fig. 4.
Additionally, respondents stated that Timor-Leste's agriculture suffered from high post-harvest storage losses from pests and contamination, also discussed by Bonis-Profumo et al. . Interviewed stakeholders suggested this could be improved through greater use of refrigeration systems utilising the electricity grid.
Timor-Leste's power stations and distribution lines, showing the Power Distribution Modernisation Project. The initial capital investment in the new power system was reported as US$2 billion for the main power stations and distribution lines.
Stakeholder responses and anecdotal observations of rural households in Timor-Leste revealed that lighting, mobile phone charging, television, and radio dominate electricity use with limited adoption in agriculture-related activities. According to respondents, some farming groups operated small diesel generators for rice milling.
Most of the energy infrastructure that existed when Timor-Leste was part of Indonesia was destroyed during the violent outbreaks of 1999. At the time of independence in 2002, electricity access was estimated to be just 24 % of the population .
Timor-Leste's rapid electrification program has largely followed what Herington et al. characterised as a ‘donor-gift’ paradigm . This is evidenced by a large-scale technology program implemented by a single government actor (common in post-conflict reconstruction, as noted in Section 3.1) and with little community engagement.