Foundations for Networking Microgrids in Rural Communities Based on Quality of Life

Rural electrification improves the quality of life in communities. Many methods of improving electricity access in rural communities involve microgrids to provide a renewable source of energy. The microgrid energy is uncertain in regards of the amount of energy produced and time dependency of energy generation. To address this, a compromised decision support problem (cDSP) is presented to determine proper energy allocation for a single microgrid being split between two communities. The cDSP is intended to be a flexible model to help compensate with the stability issues regarding energy production and time-dependent energy demands. The cDSP is also intended to provide a set of workable solutions rather than one optimal solution, as this compensates for variations in community need metrics and communal growth, which lead to a higher energy demand. The parameters evaluated in the cDSP for energy allocation in this paper are related to water, safety, and household energy. The results from the cDSP allow us to see a solution space for different weights of energy allocation, which minimizes the deviation from the target values of each load. The methodology provided allows for decision-makers to change the target values and available energy values to tailor the results to a specific community. The framework can also be adapted to be used in other communities. This would however require further insight on energy production and demand-related information and community value-specific information for a proper QOL assessment to be performed. This is due to the differences between each community, which can be due to economic reasons, political reasons, or other systematically driven reasons. A framework is proposed to relate quality of life and energy management for a microgrid split between two communities. This framework could be used by policymakers to quickly adapt a microgrid to be used by two communities in the case of a failure due to anything from a faulty component to extreme weather conditions. The test cases implemented in the paper show the effects of changing the percentage of available energy from the singular microgrid to the two separate communities, which may be done due to different energy demands present. From the test case provided, we can see that as the amount of energy provided to a community increases, even if this is based on a same percentage demand increase, as shown in the test case for this paper, there is more variation in the possible energy allocation solutions. This is due to more energy being added to a system that provides more opportunity to distribute the energy to the different needed loads. Energy can have a different impact on the community’s values, which is not a straightforward relationship.