Investigating the feasibility of a renewable energy-based standalone microgrid for remote area applications: An opto-techno-economic and environmental perspective

Energy poverty is a significant barrier to development for millions of people globally in remote areas; developing nations like India still use conventional fuels to meet their energy needs. Microgrids can be a feasible solution for remote electrification by integrating distributed energy resources. The present work investigates the feasibility, planning, and optimal sizing of a standalone microgrid system from a socio-techno-economic and environmental perspective for the electrification of a remote area in an Indian scenario. For the feasibility analysis, a remote village, Dayarthi, in Andhra Pradesh, India, was investigated by considering the daily load profile, which includes domestic loads, community loads, and agriculture loads. The total load demand is 333.53 kWh/day, with a peak load of 45.75 kW. Four potential microgrid configurations are investigated, with various combinations of diesel generator, wind turbine, photovoltaic, and battery storage. A sociotechnical-economic-environmental analysis identifies the best configuration by looking at the different microgrid scenarios that are possible and suggesting the best one with the highest percentage of renewable energy at the lowest net present cost and levelized cost of energy with minimum unmet loads. Furthermore, the optimal scenario cost of energy is compared with the most recent study in the literature.