Sustainable trade-off between reliability and electricity prices for geographically isolated communities

Rural electrification has been identified as one of the essential prerequisite for the development of modern society. Provision of uninterrupted supply for rural enterprises and affordable electricity for low-income users is imperative for the revitalisation of rural areas. Stand-alone microgrids powered by renewables are currently deployed with a trade-off between cost and reliability. No user receives complete satisfaction which increases the risk of project failure over time. A more sustainable approach is presented in this paper. Users are offered a choice between 1) an electrical supply at a low price but that may be affected by low Renewable Energy (RE) availability due to unusual weather variations, and 2) a higher reliability of supply, much less dependent on weather variations, but at a higher price. The benefits and applicability of this approach have been evaluated through microgrid design simulations performed with HOMER Pro. The results show that this method gives significant benefits: 1) rural enterprises can avail reliable supply and 2) low-income households benefit from lowest electricity bills. Future work is to quantify the gain in term of social welfare for the community and to extend this concept to whole cities powered in majority by RE.