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Sustainable Microgrids for Remote, Isolated and Emerging Areas: Current Trends and Perspectives in Policies, Practices and Technologies

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (28 February 2019) | Viewed by 7950

Special Issue Editors

Department of Natural Resources Development and Agricultural Engineering, School of Environment and Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural University of Athens, 75 Iera Odos Street, 11855 Athens, Greece
Interests: process control; computational intelligence; automation in agriculture; wireless sensor networks; microgrids’ management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Natural Resources Development and Agricultural Engineering, School of Environment and Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural University of Athens, 75 Iera Odos Street, 11855 Athens, Greece
Interests: renewable energy; energy efficiency; rural industrialization and climate change mitigation; utilization of artificial intelligence approaches for the design, sizing, management and control of complex energy systems, as well as for developing decision support systems for energy policy planning and climate change mitigation; technical and regulatory issues concerning renewables, energy efficiency and rural electrification
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Access to affordable and clean energy is one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations (UN). Much has been done in the past few years, but still, 1.1 billion people lack access to electricity. Rural development and energy access are very closely related; it is important to note that 82% of the people of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) with no access to electricity live in rural areas. Use of electricity is linked to GDP growth; electricity can be used to power productive uses aiding ultimately in job creation and poverty alleviation. It is estimated that microgrids will play a very crucial role in electrifying the rural areas of the developing world. In Sub-Saharan Africa only about 100,000 to 200,000 microgrids will be needed in the near future. New technologies like multiple product generation, service provisions based on electricity and new digital technology paradigms like Pay-As-You-Go formulate this new environment. The energy–water–agriculture nexus creates new possibilities for formulating business models in microgrids in the developing world that will achieve economic viability.

This Special Issue focuses on current trends and perspectives in policies, practices and technologies of microgrids towards their own sustainability, as well as the sustainability of the areas where it is planned to be installed. We invite you to contribute to this issue by submitting comprehensive reviews, case studies, or research articles that focus on scientific methods, technological tools and innovatively technical–social–economic analyses, in order to provide an opportunity for learning the state-of-the-art and for discussion on future directions in sustainable microgrids. Papers selected for this Special Issue will be subject to a rigorous peer-review procedure with the aim of rapid and wide dissemination of research results, developments, and applications.

Prof. Dr. Konstantinos G. Arvanitis
Dr. George Kyriakarakos
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Distributed generation in rural environments
  • Autonomous electrical energy systems in remote and isolated regions
  • Co-generation and polygeneration in autonomous energy systems
  • Productive uses of energy in microgrids
  • Energy management in microgrids
  • Fault management in microgrids
  • Primary, secondary and tertiary control of microgids
  • Optimization techniques and computational intelligence methods for sustainable microgrids
  • Energy storage in microgrids
  • Novel informatics and communication techniques for microgrids
  • Energy – water – agriculture nexus in rural areas
  • Planning, design and operation of microgrids in remote areas
  • Nanogrids for home applications in remote, isolated and developing regions
  • Digital technologies applications in microgrids
  • Strategies, policies and regulatory framework for microgrids in the developing world
  • Business models for microgrids in the developing world
  • Modeling, Simulation and Analysis of nanogrids and microgrids
  • Environmental and socioeconomic impacts of microgrids
  • Alignment of social and technical innovation for microgrids
  • Case studies and lessons learned

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 3608 KiB  
Article
Cooperation between Two Micro-Grids Considering Power Exchange: An Optimal Sizing Approach Based on Collaborative Operation
by Yuansheng Huang, Lei Yang, Shijian Liu and Guangli Wang
Sustainability 2018, 10(11), 4198; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10114198 - 14 Nov 2018
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 2416
Abstract
Optimal sizing of single micro-grid faces problems such as high life cycle cost, low self-consumption of power generated by renewable energy, and disturbances of intermittent renewable energy. Interconnecting single micro-grids as a cooperative system to reach a proper size of renewable energy generations [...] Read more.
Optimal sizing of single micro-grid faces problems such as high life cycle cost, low self-consumption of power generated by renewable energy, and disturbances of intermittent renewable energy. Interconnecting single micro-grids as a cooperative system to reach a proper size of renewable energy generations and batteries is a credible method to promote performance in reliability and economy. However, to guarantee the optimal collaborative sizing of two micro-grids is a challenging task, particularly with power exchange. In this paper, the optimal sizing of economic and collaborative for two micro-grids and the tie line is modelled as a unit commitment problem to express the influence of power exchange between micro-grids on each life cycle cost, meanwhile guaranteeing certain degree of power supply reliability, which is calculated by Loss of Power Supply Probability in the simulation. A specified collaborative operation of power exchange between two micro-grids is constructed as the scheduling scheme to optimize the life cycle cost of two micro-grids using genetic algorithm. The case study verifies the validity of the method proposed and reveal the advantages of power exchange in the two micro-grids system. The results demonstrate that the proposed optimal sizing means based on collaborative operation can minimize the life cycle cost of two micro-grids respectively considering different renewable energy sources. Compared to the sizing of single micro-grid, the suggested method can not only improve the economic performance for each micro-grid but also form a strong support between interconnected micro-grids. In addition, a proper price of power exchanges will balance the cost saving between micro-grids, making the corresponding stake-holders prefer to be interconnected. Full article
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15 pages, 1713 KiB  
Article
Market Participation in the Age of Big Dams: The Belo Monte Hydroelectric Dam and Its Impact on Rural Agrarian Households
by Aniseh S. Bro, Emilio Moran and Miquéias Freitas Calvi
Sustainability 2018, 10(5), 1592; https://doi.org/10.3390/su10051592 - 16 May 2018
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4693
Abstract
With rapid population growth comes the ever-important task of meeting the energy demand that this growth requires, and many of the world’s tropical regions have turned to hydropower to address the challenges associated with increasing energy consumption. Hydropower is an important energy policy [...] Read more.
With rapid population growth comes the ever-important task of meeting the energy demand that this growth requires, and many of the world’s tropical regions have turned to hydropower to address the challenges associated with increasing energy consumption. Hydropower is an important energy policy issue in Brazil, and it is promoted as the preferred electricity option, because it is the least expensive in terms of long-term returns on investment; the Belo Monte dam in Northern Brazil provides an opportunity to study the effects of large investments in hydroelectric infrastructure on the surrounding local population. Using a matched panel data spanning 10 years (2005 to 2015), we study the impacts of Brazil’s Belo Monte dam on cocoa and other food crop producers in the region. We find that households have seen a decline in rural employment opportunities, and despite improvements in cocoa productivity households have experienced declining food production. With the construction of the dam largely completed, farmers must now face the challenges of decreased food access and shifts in employment opportunities, and while there are many advantages and opportunities associated with this new development, special policy considerations are necessary to ensure that there are safety nets in place to assist those who will see a decline in access to economic opportunities. Full article
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