Balancing Cost and Demand in Electricity Access Projects: Case Studies in Ecuador, Mexico and Peru

Rosa Galleguillos-Pozo, Bruno Domenech, Laia Ferrer-Martí and Rafael Pastor
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Rosa Galleguillos-Pozo: Institute of Industrial and Control Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—BarcelonaTech, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Bruno Domenech: Institute of Industrial and Control Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—BarcelonaTech, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Laia Ferrer-Martí: Institute of Industrial and Control Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—BarcelonaTech, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Rafael Pastor: Institute of Industrial and Control Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya—BarcelonaTech, 08028 Barcelona, Spain

Mathematics, 2022, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-19

Abstract: Rural areas in developing countries have the highest concentrations of unelectrified communities. There is a clear link between electricity consumption and the Human Development Index, as highlighted by the 7th Development Goal of the United Nations. Estimating the energy needs of the previously nonelectrified population is imprecise when designing rural electrification projects. Indeed, daily energy demand and peak power assessments are complex, since these values must be valid over the project’s lifetime, while tight budgets do not allow for the systems to be oversized. In order to assist project promoters, this study proposes a fuzzy mixed integer linear programming model (FMILP) for the design of wind–PV rural electrification systems including uncertainty in the demand requirements. Two different FMILP approaches were developed that maximized the minimum or the average satisfaction of the users. Next, the FMILP approaches were applied to six Latin American communities from three countries. Compared with the deterministic MILP (where the energy and peak power needs are considered as specific values), the FMILP results achieved a better balance between the project cost and the users’ satisfaction regarding the energy and peak power supplied. Regarding the two approaches, maximizing the users’ minimum satisfaction obtained globally better solutions.

Keywords: microgrids; rural electrification; fuzzy optimization; developing countries; case studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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