PublicationJournal Article Methodology for Monitoring Sustainable Development of Isolated Microgrids in Rural Communities

Published:
March 18, 2017
Author(s):
Publication Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:

Abstract: Micro­grids are a rapidly evolv­ing and increas­ingly com­mon form of local power generation

used to serve the needs of both rural and urban com­mu­ni­ties. In this paper, we present a methodology

to eval­u­ate the evo­lu­tion of the sus­tain­abil­ity of stand-​​alone micro­grids projects. The proposed

method­ol­ogy con­sid­ers a com­pos­ite sus­tain­abil­ity index (CSI) that includes both pos­i­tive and negative

impacts of the oper­a­tion of the micro­grid in a given com­mu­nity. The CSI is con­structed along

envi­ron­men­tal, social, eco­nomic and tech­ni­cal dimen­sions of the micro­grid. The sub-​​indexes of

each dimen­sion are aggre­gated into the CSI via a set of adap­tive weight­ing fac­tors, which indicate

the rel­a­tive impor­tance of the cor­re­spond­ing dimen­sion in the sus­tain­abil­ity goals. The proposed

method­ol­ogy aims to be a sup­port instru­ment for pol­icy mak­ers espe­cially when defin­ing sound

cor­rec­tive mea­sures to guar­an­tee the sus­tain­abil­ity of small, iso­lated micro­grid projects. To validate

the per­for­mance of the pro­posed method­ol­ogy, a micro­grid installed in the north­ern part of Chile

(Huat­a­condo) has been used as a bench­mark­ing project.

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