Quantitative evaluation of renewable-energy-based remote microgrids: curtailment, load shifting, and reliability

Muhammad Shahzad Javed, Jakub Jurasz, Madeleine McPherson, Yanjun Dai and Tao Ma

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2022, vol. 164, issue C

Abstract: Achieving carbon-free electricity for all can be facilitated by setting up small to medium-scale off-grid renewable energy systems (RES); however, the variability of renewable energy sources challenges system reliability. In this paper, we optimize a range of RES configurations considering different combinations of solar, wind, battery and pumped hydro storage for a specific location under diverse flexibility scenarios: one of load shifting (flexibility of power demand by changing consumption patterns by 0–30%), one of small load loss/shedding (0–5%), and one of both. Next, we quantitatively assess the impact of the flexibility options, renewable source and energy storage type impact on the microgrids' optimal energy management, cost, curtailment, and reliability level. The results show that RES utilizes 40–45% of added flexibility during particular day hours. The period of these critical hours is significantly affected by the RES type: namely the morning hours for battery storage-based RES while the evening hours for pumped hydro storage-based RES. The load shifting decreases the RES cost by 4–9%, but it does not reduce the overall system curtailment due to the substantial decrease in the energy storage size compared to the RE generator size when the load deferment is allowed. However, load loss scenarios not only reduced the RES cost by 30–50% but they also lessened the system curtailment by 40–51%. The off-grid RES cost can be reduced up to 60–67% by increasing the system flexibility. Moreover, the type of RE input source substantially impacts the system’ self-sufficiency, energy served to energy generated ratio, and capacity factor, whose values vary in ranging 0.42–0.72, 0.18–0.5, and 0.13–0.23, respectively.

Keywords: Off-grid renewable energy; Demand side management; Techno-economic analysis; Multi-objective optimization; Energy storage; Energy system designing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032122004208
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:164:y:2022:i:c:s1364032122004208

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2022.112516

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().