Obtained using the improved Load Modelling Approach

Robust metrics to measure sustainability of such projects are still lacking. In this thesis, research is carried out to examine the sustainability of rural microgrids and then develop metrics to enhance how sustainability can be measured for these types of projects. The research further seeks to formulate and design an optimum, robust, sustainable and economical solar PV based microgrid solution for electrification of a remote area focusing on green areas that currently have no access to electricity. The objective is to achieve a system that is cost effective, reliable and sustainable. The results show that gender considerations have a significant impact on load profiles and a higher consumption is obtained when gender is considered. Next, an efficient and robust sizing approach for off-grid PV microgrid systems has been developed and named the ComµGrid Sizing Approach. This approach utilizes “Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP)” to optimally size the PV microgrid and the “ComµGrid Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN)” algorithm to aggregate load and meteorological data. MATLAB software is used to execute the optimization algorithm.