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

Abstract

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.

Last-Mile Rural Electrification: Lessons Learned from Universalization Programs in Brazil and Venezuela

“…All the sustainability dimensions have been included. Indicators have been selected considering the availability of comparable information from the two programs and according to previous works related to rural electrification projects and programs evaluations (Domenech et al, 2015(Domenech et al, , 2019a(Domenech et al, , 2019bGómez-Hernández et al, 2019;Juanpera et al, 2020;Lillo et al, 2015aLillo et al, , 2015bLillo et al, , 2021López-González et al, 2017b, 2018a, 2018bRanaboldo et al, 2015aRanaboldo et al, , 2015bTriadó-Aymerich et al, 2016). Hence, 18 ad-hoc criteria specific to the application context have been chosen.…”

Mini-Grids for the Sustainable Electrification of Rural Areas in Sub-Saharan Africa: Assessing the Potential of KeyMaker Models

“…A growing amount of literature is emphasizing the value added of applying approaches such as centres of moments and annealing for power generation asset sizing and grid structure optimization, respectively [39]. Domenech et al [40] benchmarked the advantages and limitations of traditionally optimization methods with multicriteria approaches, while Liang et al [41] combined the former with artificial intelligence approaches. Fioriti et al [42] applied stochastic modelling to isolated mini-grids.…”

“…Fioriti et al [42] applied stochastic modelling to isolated mini-grids. Although our method based on HOMER does not account for social factors and detailed distribution grid sizing [40], the nature of our analysis (with a focus on performing sensitivity analyses on how different variables affect the overall project economics), the availability of literature in regards to distribution grid costs and the fact that HOMER is the most widely used software across the mini-grid sector, have all contributed to its selection to perform this analysis.…”

Little time left to reverse emissions—Growing hope despite disappointing CO2 trend

“…Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and Environment has devoted a Special Collection of papers to address the sustainable energy issue in these countries. Rural electrification (Bisaga, Parikh, Mulugetta, & Hailu, 2019;Domenech, Ferrer-Martí, & Pastor, 2019) is a key area in this context. There is also a lack of studies concerned with better understanding the energy systems in Africa and South America, which could also have a material effect on climate mitigation (Machado et al, 2019).…”