Integration of Microgrids and Electric Vehicle Technologies in the National Grid as the Key Enabler to the Sustainable Development for Rwanda

Abstract

Rwanda is an East African Community (EAC) nation with rapid and remarkable past development in different sectors and still with the ambitious targets and plans to be achieved in the coming years ahead. The government plans universal electricity access by 2024 with 52% grid connection and 48% off-grid connections. In the transport sector, the concept of electric vehicles has been initiated and started in order to contribute to the UN Paris agreement and decrease the reliance of the transport sector on gaseous fuels which are one source of air pollutants leading to climate change, premature deaths, and morbidity associated with poor air quality. With higher electricity demand than the generation of the Rwandan power grid, different energy strategies are being developed with the overall objective to achieve the targeted universal energy access. In order to overcome the aforementioned issue, this paper proposes an integration of solar PV microgrids for the satisfaction of electric vehicle (EV) technology in Rwanda. Using HOMER Grid software, a managed EV charging station is simulated to a grid connected solar PV microgrid with storage in order to assess the economic impact. The results show that the proposed technology can lower the levelized cost (LCOE) of electricity by 139.7%. This study can contribute to further research developments in either different perspectives related to the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) with electric vehicles or studies related to affordable and environment-energy systems.

Technoeconomic Assessment of Electric Vehicles for Optimal Microgrid Energy System Planning

“…The GSMA employs HOMER as one of its design tools for renewable energy base stations. It is also a great tool for extensive simulation of demands (hourly, daily, monthly, and annual scenarios), cost-effective optimization, and sensitivity analysis (Bimenyimana et al, 2021).…”

“…Road transport accounts for three-quarters of all greenhouse gas emissions (Commisison, 2023). The most promising strategy to minimize this share is to replace internal combustion engines (ICE) in regular automobiles with electric vehicles (EV) and implementing technology such as microgrids (Bimenyimana et al, 2021).…”

“…However, the widespread use of renewable distributed generator (DG) and electric vehicles (EVs) raises generation and load risks. Microgrid installation has been encouraged globally to address contemporary concerns of energy inequity and environmental difficulties (AbuElrub et al, 2020;Bimenyimana et al, 2021;Himabindu et al, 2021). This emphasizes the need of managing the supply demand situation in microgrid to maximize advantages to the microgrid operator and vehicle owners while without affecting technical aspects of the supply system and automobiles (AbuElrub et al, 2020;Bimenyimana et al, 2021;Gupta et al, 2022;Karfopoulos et al, 2011;Popescu, 2021).…”

Hybrid Control and Energy Management of a Residential System Integrating Vehicle-to-Home Technology

“…The rapid development of EVs has led to a sharp increase in the demand for electricity from these electric vehicles, which has led to thinking about a set of solutions to remedy this increase in energy demand. Several research directions are addressed on this topic, such as the integration of EV in micro-grids [3,4], the Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) concepts [5][6][7][8][9], charging management of EVs in parking lots [10,11], the impact of EV on the grid [12,13], the charging infrastructure [14], battery degradation [15] and the charging economics concept [16]. The integration of EVs in residential systems is an important aspect of addressing the problem of high energy demand, with the optimal integration of renewable energy systems (RES) and energy storage systems (ESS).…”

Energy Management in the Microgrid and Its Optimal Planning for Supplying Wireless Charging Electric Vehicle

“…Based on a heuristic algorithm, an optimization and smart energy system for an MG related to EV permits reducing the cost of electricity for a population [22]. An investigation on the contribution of MG and EVs as key enablers for sustainable development shows that the integration of RE and management of EVs charging station all contribute to affordable and reliable energy system [23].…”