Electrification of Rural Remote Areas Using Renewable Energy Sources: Literature Review

Abstract

The current stage of development of autonomous energy systems is characterized by a rapid increase in renewable energy sources’ installed capacity. Such growth is observed both in centralized and isolated energy systems. Renewable energy sources show high efficiency in the electrification of rural remote settlements around the world. The power of such power complexes varies from several kilowatts to tens of megawatts. When solving the problems of rural remote settlements electrification, the main issues of optimizing the composition of equipment and the structure of the energy systems play an extremely important role. Moreover, depending on the specifications of the problem being solved, criteria for evaluating efficiency are used, which are different. For example, the following are used as objective functions: minimization of the levelized cost of energy and fossil fuel consumption; maximizing the standard of people living and reliability indicators; the payback period of the project and other indicators. Various combinations of objective functions and the solution to the multi-criteria optimization problem are possible. Moreover, an important stage in the development of renewable energy in remote rural areas is the availability of new mechanisms to support an environmentally friendly generation. These mechanisms can be used in solving problems of optimizing the structure and composition of energy equipment in remote power systems. The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate the world practices of optimal design of isolated energy systems. The review includes both the main questions that arise when solving such problems, and specific problems that require a more detailed analysis of the object of study.