Optimization of rural network development

Abstract

A huge area with enormous number of inhabitants isn’t electrified in Africa. Although the electricity generation and distribution technology is given, the speed of network development and construction is limited by financial, material and human resources. A short term decision has to be done where to develop the network that should fit also in the long term plans. On one hand the high voltage (HV) network can be developed step by step but in this case the remote territories will be electrified decades later and masses of people will migrate to the metropoles. It has huge financial and social costs as well. Another possibility to set up independent small scale microgrid-minigrid but it is not a competitor of the bulk net in large scale. It should be connected soon or later to the national grid. Mapping the problem to an optimization task we can find the optimal ratio between the bulk- and microgrid developments at a given resource constraints. We find that the HV network should reach the neighbouring areas meanwhile the microgrids should be set up at the fares region.