Reciprocal Influence of Supply and Demand Quality in Remote Off-grid Systems

The provision of electricity to the most remote areas is part of Sustainable Development Goal 7, which aims for universal energy access. This can be assessed partially through the Multi-Tier Framework attributes. The quality of electricity is one of the attributes that is often overlooked, despite its significance to the system’s electromagnetic compatibility. This oversight can be attributed to the challenging circumstances in remote areas, characterized by limited resources and infrastructure. Aiming to emphasize the importance of quality attributes, this study investigates how harmonics manifests in the system with an emphasis on the reciprocal influence of the supply and demand quality. A specific context of the remote off-grid system was modelled as a converter-based generation supplying electricity to a cluster of households. The simulation results indicate that the presence of nonlinear loads in the system could induce harmonics throughout the system and ensuring good supply quality does not guarantee immunity to harmonics induced by the nonlinear loads. Consequently, it is imperative to ensure both supply and demand qualities are sufficiently robust to comply with harmonic standards.