Smart Village Load Planning Simulations in Support of Digital Energy Management for Off-grid Rural Community Microgrids

Abstract

In isolated rural village electrification, renewable energy resources are often the only alternative to provide sustainable energy to economically deprived isolated rural communities. In support of current alternative energy system developments, engineers use smart village based computer model design approaches. This includes desktop computer simulation modelling for renewable energy systems and smartgrid energy management systems to plan and scope village energy projects for particular technology configurations. This approach also supports design site component option appraisals before physical installation at targeted pilot sites. Disaggregated demand load data from advanced metering infrastructure is however hardly available to assist with the technical planning and design optimization for planned rural energy systems at remote rural villages. This means that logical demand load profiles for traditional rural villages have to be computer simulated. In this paper we describe the basic principles around discrete time device disaggregated rural village electrical load profile simulations suitable for experimentation with smart microgrid design, economic optimization and critical demand response analysis. The engineering simulation model incorporates physical appliance energy ratings and device-use behaviour patterns as basis for synthesising disaggregated archetypal load profiles. The simulated disaggregated load category archetypes reflect realistic disaggregated energy consumption patterns for devices in typical isolated rural villages. Computer generated rural village load time-series datasets are output in formats suitable for demand load data direct exports and imports into custom or commercial energy modelling software simulation platforms such as TRNSYS, HomerEnergy, EnergyPlan and ∗Corresponding author Email address: gerroprinsloo@sun.ac.za (Gerro Prinsloo ) Preprint submitted to Journal for Current Alternative Energy May 1, 2017 EnergyPlus. The simulated rural village demand load data can thus be used to validate numerical simulation models for newly planned smart rural village energy systems, or experimentation with economic optimization and demand response for multi-priority load control in rural smart microgrid environments.