Tania Urmee

Electrification of remote areas with the help of standalone power supply systems, also known as islanded microgrids, is a complex and multi-dimensional problem. This problem needs to address and consider diverse factors such as economic, technical, environmental, social and political. This study has used an analytical hierarchy process-based multi-criteria decision-making approach to obtain a more robust and universally convincing plan for remote area microgrids. To this end, a survey has been conducted from worldwide academics, industry experts and consultants. The study reveals that the economic criterion is the most important factor versus other factors.

The present study investigates the impacts of the implementation of the energy goal of SDGs (SDG 7) to national development plans on household sector energy demand of Indonesia. Three scenarios were developed: reference, current policy, and SDGs scenarios, which were simulated using the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning system (LEAP). Results show that providing clean energy access for all Indonesian (Target 7.1 of SDG 7) will increase energy demand by 67 million GJ, by 2030. However, implementation of efficiency measures (Target 7.3) will cancel out this increase. This study also reveals and discusses other interesting findings.

Electrification of remote areas with the help of standalone power supply systems, also known as islanded microgrids, is a complex and multi-dimensional problem. This problem needs to address and consider diverse factors such as economic, technical, environmental, social and political. This study has used an analytical hierarchy process-based multi-criteria decision-making approach to obtain a more robust and universally convincing plan for remote area microgrids. To this end, a survey has been conducted from worldwide academics, industry experts and consultants. The study reveals that the economic criterion is the most important factor versus other factors.

Power industries around the world are becoming liberalized to meet the increasing electricity demand efficiently and sustainably. Advanced and robust system planning are required to interconnect the power system over the large geographical area. The accurate model of power system covering the large geographical area like ASEAN Power grid (APG) is not available in the public domain. This paper presents a methodology for developing a test system model for ASEAN power grid using publicly available data. The modelling approaches are explained, and information sources are given here. The resulting APG model is simulated in MATLAB/MATPOWER simulation environment, and results are validated against the published generation and demand profiles. From the validation results, it is found that the developed model closely resembles the ASEAN power grid. The model developed here will help different stakeholders to analyze the future development scenarios of the ASEAN network.

The National Energy Policy (NEP) set 23% renewable energy target in the generation mix by 2025, where solar PV has identified as one of the feasible resources. There are many solar programs implemented in Indonesia. A large scale grid-connected solar PV (1 MW) project in Indonesia is analyzed in this study. The power plant is installed on Sumbawa island. The project is analyzed to investigate the performance of PV systems in a tropical climate. The performances were analyzed on project development, plants technical specification, energy production and performance index, and its current status. Data is collected through site visit and observations, documents review, and discussion with relevant stakeholders. PVSyst is used to simulate the potential of annual energy production and performance. Our audit found that the main components of the power plant are certified from reputable international organizations including Indonesian national standards. The simulation showed the power plant could generate 1,195 MWh annual energy with an average of 8% monthly variation which leads to an average performance index of 68.9%. Since the commissioning tests, the plant has not been operated. Consequently, no energy has been injected into the grid nor supplied to local load. Currently, the power plant is an inoperable condition due to non-technical problems. The problems are discussed, and a recommendation is presented in this paper.

When solar energy technologies are compared to the conventional energy production alternatives, they may require incentives and financial support due to their relatively high investment costs and low bidding offers in electricity markets. Tax and cash incentives are able to diminish the gap between the levelized cost of electricity and the power purchasing agreements in most of the projects. The purpose of this paper is to research the effect of combining a number of tax and cash incentives under different financial structures and to find the best combinations of support mechanisms by considering maximum reduction of levelized cost of electricity and minimum government cost, applied to Chile as a case study.

Solar Home Systems can supply basic electricity services in Sunbelt countries. About 20 % of the world's population lack of access to these services. A preliminary model to evaluate the success of a SHS implementation has been proposed previously. The views of a range of institutional stakeholders related to SHS were explored by problem centered interviews and by participatory observation. An improved model of success is developed which is capable of providing a quantitative measure of success for SHS implementations. Five groups of key stakeholders have been determined. The most important self-set goals for the institutional stakeholders are profit, quality and social benefit. The most important success factors that encourage the achievement of self-set goals were retrieved and are discussed. Measuring the level of achievement of the defined self-set goals is the largest challenge in this process. The refined model of success demonstrates the complexity of measuring the success of Solar Home System implementations. The next phase of the research is to survey the Users' views on the SHS's success.

Diesel generators are typically used in remote Australian electricity networks to generate power for its consumers. Solar PV systems are one of the most common renewable resources due to their gradual technical advancement, decreasing cost and wide application. This study aims to design and model a PV-Diesel power system for a generic remote town in Australia. The electricity generation philosophy using a centralised PV system along with the existing Diesel capacity is modelled and simulated in Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) software. The study considers higher levels of PV penetration and conducts a techno-economic analysis of different network configurations to propose a comprehensive electricity network design and generation philosophy, based on the cost of energy (AU$/kWh), the quantity of excess electricity, fuel savings potential and environmental impacts for a remote Australian town.

Globally, the PV market is growing rapidly with a total installed capacity of more than 100GW at this time. Many of the existing PV electrification projects fall short of expectations by not meeting their objectives. A lot of these projects have not taken into account the social and cultural issues of the community, nor its future development. Experience from other programs suggested that, to implement a solar PV system, the people have to understand and accept its reliability compared to the unreliability of the grid. Cultural acceptance is a “must” to make the project work successfully over a long time, thereby improving the project’s sustainability. It is emphasised that we should include community participation while working on electricity access. If the community is not involved, people will not take on projects to support them as their own. It is also important to define a community, its characteristics and limits, and to identify the local legitimised decision-making process. An analysis of the community’s perspective would help our understanding in developing project. This paper explains the social, cultural and policy issues of remote area PV applications in the light of current projects in developing countries.

The use of small grid-connected wind turbines in the built environment is increasing. The international wind turbine design standard is based on open terrain sites, but in the built environment, the turbulence intensity is much higher than in open terrain and can lead to premature fatigue of turbines This paper compares the turbulence power spectral densities from direct measurement on the rooftop of Bunning Group Ltd’s warehouse at Port Kennedy, Western Australia, with predictions from the von Karman and Kaimal spectra used by turbulence models in the design standard. Both model spectra under estimate the magnitude of the measured values for all wind components although the Kaimal spectra provides more realistic values in terms of predicting the turbulence power spectra of lateral and vertical wind components in the built-environment. A corrected Kaimal model is proposed that has good agreement with measured values and can be viewed as a first step towards upgrading the existing standard with a dedicated design model for the built environment.