Integrating Quality of Life in Sociotechnical Design: A Review of Microgrid Design Tools and Social Indicators

Abstract

Microgrid systems can provide distributed power to communities that lack basic access to electricity. Scalability, maintenance, and power management are prominent challenges associated with microgrid resilience. These obstacles can be limiting in the continued development of the community. As progress drives an increase in energy demand, the microgrid needs to continue to meet that demand. Designing systems with the appropriate maintenance levels is another obstacle that impacts resiliency. There are many design tools that analyze system performance and cost. One goal of this work is to review a set of these technical models. HOMER Energy, System Advisor Model (SAM), and the Microgrid Design Toolkit (MDT) were reviewed. However, technical and economic performance is just one aspect of design. In the design procedure, social parameters also need to be considered. Few, if any, microgrid design tools consider societal dynamics. This work also aims to evaluate social indicators in the context of sustainable microgrid design. Accordingly, relationships are established between common societal indicators and the microgrid challenges of scalability, maintenance, and power management.

Understanding Microgrid Sustainability: A Systemic and Comprehensive Review

“…The issues of microgrids will be described based on its four fields, as shown in Table 1. High confidence in the community and the microgrid operator [74][75][76] In this work, the definition of a sustainable microgrid is capable of addressing all the issues of its fields in a satisfactory manner at the time of analysis. The purpose of what is sufficient for each field depends on each case, leaving the possibility of qualitative analysis.…”

“…The core social issue is the communication and the social interactions necessary to shape its social acceptance. The literature points to three defining factors in shaping social acceptance of microgrids: the knowledge about the microgrid, the rules that govern the microgrid, and the perception of the microgrid [76,224,236,237].…”

“…The perception of the microgrid relates to how the technology changes the narrative of the individuals and the groups [74,75]. This community perception will be strongly related to how well the microgrid improves or does not improve the local quality of life [76] but also by the general confidence of the community in the entire microgrid system [216]. Communication about the benefits of the microgrid [238] and transparency on its nuisances requires a highly qualified management team that takes into account the vision of the community [239].…”