Simulation-based decision support tool for electrification of isolated areas using a network with multiple renewable sources

WIREs Energy & Environment

Pastor

2018

Nowadays, around 1.1 billion people in rural and remote areas of developing countries remain without electricity. Stand-alone projects that combine the wind and photovoltaic generation technologies as well as microgrids and individual supplies for the distribution network are an adequate strategy to reach such isolated regions. However, the design of electrification projects is complex, having to define the best combination of generation and distribution technologies, under a challenging social context and tight technoeconomic resources. In order to ease decision-making, several tools have been developed in the literature and are here reviewed, grouped into three main categories: optimization processes, aiming to minimize project costs subject to technical constraints, through exact or heuristic algorithms; multicriteria processes, using different methods to select the best among a set of predefined scenarios according to economic, technical, social, and environmental criteria; and systematized tools, that have been developed to provide user-friendly interface for their larger dissemination in different regions and contexts. Hence, this paper aims to provide researchers and practitioners an analysis of the advantages and limitations of approaches used over the last decade when addressing the designing of wind and/or photovoltaic electrification projects for extremely poor and isolated areas in developing countries, as well as some areas for further research.

Section: Systematized Toolsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparison of various approaches to design wind‐PV rural electrification projects in remote areas of developing countries

Domenech

WIREs Energy & Environment

Pastor

2018

“…Already some two-phased tools have been designed to assist decision-making in rural electrification problems. For example, OptElDec [34] sizes several technologies to supply electricity to isolated MGs and selects the best one according to their performance on some criteria. Other similar tools also allow combining different technologies, such as SURE [35], and offer a high detail of the final distribution scheme, such as the methodology proposed in Domenech et al [21].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multicriteria-based methodology for the design of rural electrification systems. A case study in Nigeria

Juanpera

Blechinger

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

et al. 2020

Electrification with micro-grids is receiving increasing attention to electrify rural areas in developing countries. However, determining the best local supply solution is a complex problem that requires considering different generation technologies (i.e. solar PV, wind or diesel) and different system configurations (off-grid or on-grid). Most existing decision aid tools to assess this design only consider economical and technical issues in a single optimization process. However, social and environmental considerations have been proven key issues to ensure long-term sustainability of the projects. In this context, the objective of this work is to develop a multicriteria procedure to allow comparing electrification designs with on-grid or isolated micro-grids and different technologies considering multiple aspects. This multicriteria procedure is integrated in a two-phased methodology to assist the design of the system to electrification promoters in a structured process. First, different electrification alternatives are generated with an open-source techno-economic optimization model; next, these alternatives are evaluated and ranked with the multicriteria procedure, which considers 12 criteria representing economic, technical, socio-institutional and environmental aspects. The whole design methodology is validated with a real case study of 26 population settlements in Plateau State, Nigeria. Experts in rural electrification within the Nigerian context have been consulted to weight the criteria and particularize their evaluation for the specific case study. Results show that solar PV technology based systems are the most suitable electrification designs for communities in Nigeria, while grid connection feasibility depends on the size of the community and the distance to the closest national grid consumption point. Highlights • Rural electrification designs are compared with a multicriteria procedure. • Economic, technical, social and environmental aspects are considered. • The procedure is validated with a case study of 26 communities in Nigeria. • Experts in rural electrification have been contacted to weight the criteria. • Final results recommend PV technology-based systems.

“…Most of them are focused exclusively on the definition of the best combination of energy resources [12][13][14][15] but not on the distribution grid design. Others consider both problems although all the points must be connected to one only grid [16][17][18]. There are few references that deal with autonomous electrification systems designs using hybrid systems and microgrids or individual systems at the same time [11,19,20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

MILP-based heuristics for the design of rural community electrification projects

Triadó-Aymerich

Computers & Operations Research

García‐Villoria

et al. 2016

Wind-photovoltaic systems are a suitable option to provide electricity to isolated communities autonomously. To design these systems, there are recent mathematical models that solve the location and type of each of the electrification components and the design of the possible distribution microgrids. When the amount of demand points to electrify increases, solving the mathematical model requires a computational time that becomes infeasible in practice. To speed up the solving process, three heuristic methods based on mixed integer linear programming (MILP) are presented in this paper: Relax and Fix heuristics, heuristics based on a Corridor Method and Increasing Radius heuristics. In all algorithms first a relaxed MILP is solved to obtain a base solution and then it is used as a starting point to find a feasible solution by searching in a reduced search space. For each type of heuristic several options to relax and to reduce the solution space are developed and tested. Extensive computational experiments based on real projects are carried out and results show that the best heuristic vary according to the size of instances.Postprint (author's final draft