Sustainability 2016, 8(11), 1163; doi:10.3390/su8111163
Methodology for Monitoring Sustainable Development of Isolated Microgrids in Rural Communities
1
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Chile, Santiago 8370451, Chile
2
Escuela de Ingeniería Química, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Ciudad Universitaria, 11 Av., Guatemala 01012, Guatemala
3
Energy and Resources Group and Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3050, USA
4
Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Tan Yigitcanlar
Received: 1 July 2016 / Revised: 30 October 2016 / Accepted: 31 October 2016 / Published: 10 November 2016
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. View Full-Text
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).
Share & Cite This Article
MDPI and ACS Style
Rahmann, C.; Núñez, O.; Valencia, F.; Arrechea, S.; Sager, J.; Kammen, D. Methodology for Monitoring Sustainable Development of Isolated Microgrids in Rural Communities. Sustainability 2016, 8, 1163.
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
Related Articles
Article Metrics
Comments
[Return to top]
Sustainability
EISSN 2071-1050
Published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland
RSS
E-Mail Table of Contents Alert