Abstract
In the grid-tied micro-grid context, energy resilience can be defined as the time period that a local energy system can supply the critical loads during an unplanned upstream grid outage. While the role of renewable-based micro-grids in enhancing communities’ energy resilience is well-appreciated, the academic literature on the techno-economic optimisation of community-scale micro-grids lacks a quantitative decision support analysis concerning the inclusion of a minimum resilience constraint in the optimisation process. Utilising a specifically-developed, time-based resilience capacity characterisation method to quantify the sustainability of micro-grids in the face of different levels of extended grid power outages, this paper facilitates stakeholder decision-making on the trade-off between the whole-life cost of a community micro-grid system and its degree of resilience. Furthermore, this paper focuses on energy infrastructure expansion planning, aiming to analyse the importance of micro-grid reinforcement to meet new sources of electricity demand—particularly, transport electrification—in addition to the business-as-usual demand growth. Using quantitative case study evidence from the Totarabank Subdivision in New Zealand, the paper concludes that at the current feed-in-tariff rate (NZ$0.08/kWh), the life cycle profitability of resilience-oriented community micro-grid capacity reinforcement is guaranteed within a New Zealand context, though constrained by capital requirements.
Highlights
The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable evolution of micro-grids (MGs) from a nascent concept to a pivotal player in the transition to 100% renewable energy [1–3]
We present and discusses the numerical simulation results obtained for the test-case MG laid oTuhtiisnsSeecctitoionnp2rebsyenaptspalynidngdtishceumsseetshtohdedneusmcreibreicdalinsiSmeuctliaotnio3n. results obtained for the test-case MG laid out in Section 2 by applying the method described in Section 3. 4.1
The combination of multi-day outages as a result of many of the recent extreme weather events, and the improved cost-efficiency of distributed energy resources—including renewable energy generation and storage technologies—have stimulated considerable interest in deploying community-led sustainable energy systems that are capable of meeting critical loads if the upstream network fails
Summary
The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable evolution of micro-grids (MGs) from a nascent concept to a pivotal player in the transition to 100% renewable energy [1–3]. Eskandarpour et al [8] have formulated a mixed-integer linear programming problem for the optimal sizing and siting of MGs within power systems by considering the cost of unserved energy during utility grid outages as the objective function, while adhering to a limited budget for resilience improvements. In another instance, Barnes et al [9] have revealed the potentially significant benefits of including energy resilience constraints in the long-term investment planning problem of networked MGs in terms of the prolonged outage survivability and overall cost-efficiency. Proposing a grid-tied MG investment planning model to optimally site and size candidate sets of distributed energy resources and utility lines, whilst adhering to a pre-specified degree of resilience to N-k contingencies. 1N-k contingency criterion guarantees that N critical components within a power network can continue normal operation in cases any k components simultaneously suffer a failure
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