The Cost of Rural Electrification Including E-Cooking for Bolivian Medium Size Isolated Low-Lands Villages.
Abstract
Countries around the world are preparing to give the last leap towards 100 % of rural electrification. To that aim, national plans must include the estimated project costs for various technologies providing electricity in remote areas. The main goal of this work is to improve the OnSSET module used to calculate the LCOE of microgrids. This is done by relying on previous field surveys from rural un-electrified villages in Bolivia with different cultural and geographic backgrounds. With this and a stochastic load generator model (RAMP), several hypothetical village configurations are generated. This information is fed into a two-stage stochastic optimization-based sizing model to determine the most suitable micro-grid configuration and its net present cost (NPC) for each considered village. The results of the simulation are used to train a Gaussian processes model capable of predicting the LCOE as a function of the daily average demand, renewable energy capacity factors, and techno-economic characteristics of the components. Finally, the function on OnSSET to calculate the LCOE of microgrids is changed for the proposed method. The results for Bolivia show that, due to the low consumption density and the unfavorable geography (mountains), the optimal mix of energy sources for electrification significantly relies on microgrid systems. Keywords: Rural electrification, solar energy, Microgrids.