Resilience assessment of microgrids transitioning to multi-microgrids in rural areas

Abstract

Electrification is a priority for many countries, such as those seeking to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 7, which focuses on supplying affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy for all. The use of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) to design off-grid Microgrids (MGs) in rural areas significantly contributes toward achieving this goal, especially as the MGs are eventually interconnected to form more extensive and reliable multi-MGs. However, due to their remote locations (e.g., resulting in longer time before support can reach the areas), MGs are particularly susceptible to weather shocks (e.g., Windstorms), and even if their transition to multi-MGs makes them more reliable, it is unclear if their resilience will also improve. To tackle this research question, this paper proposes an MG resilience assessment methodology which brings together (i) linear programming optimisation of energy resources to capture the use of RES with (ii) Sequential Monte Carlo simulations (SMCS) to capture the stochastic impacts of Windstorms on different MGs and multi-MGs configurations. The results, based on studies formulated with real data from the Sarawak area in Malaysia, show that even though the resilience of MGs can be improved by interconnecting them, the improvements can be limited if the interconnectors are prone to being impacted by extreme shocks.