An innovative approach for the optimal sizing of mini-grids in rural areas integrating the demand, the supply, and the grid

Ibrahim Abada, Mehdi Othmani and Léa Tatry

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2021, vol. 146, issue C

Abstract: On the path to universal electricity access, the most significant challenge lies in the electrification of remote rural villages where connection to the national grid is a durable but prohibitively expensive solution. With decreasing costs of renewable technologies, autonomous mini-grids combined with solar home systems constitute today an economically affordable and robust electrification option. In this paper, we elaborate a novel methodology that automatically designs and estimates the cost of the optimal mini-grid to install in a village, that requires only some geographical information with a delimitation of its roofs. In a first step, we use machine-learning algorithms to predict the demand of each building. In a second step, we develop a mathematical optimization approach to best design the mini-grid where generation and storage assets as well as the reticulation of the grid are jointly optimized. Our methodology has many advantages: first, by automating the full process, the calculation time of the electrification cost is drastically reduced by many orders of magnitude and the methodology can easily be deployed to any village/region. Second, our approach can reduce investment costs by more than 20% when compared to existing benchmarks. Finally, it can help agencies to efficiently assess the electrification costs of many regions and support them in the energy access planning.

Keywords: Energy access; Mini-grids; Decentralized power production; Machine-learning; Optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2021.111117

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