Optimal Sizing and Location of the Power Plant in Multi-Villages Microgrid

Over the world, some rural people and communities are facing a limited access of energy services. It is very costly and not profitable to connect these areas national electrical grid. So, the use of the renewable energies can be an interesting alternative. In this paper, design of a photovoltaic system is studied by applying an optimization method. The study case is based on a centralized PV power production to supply energy to distributed rural communities' loads. The design of PV panels, storage batteries, power converters and security devices can be very constraining. For this reason, multicriteria optimization method can be applied to the system parameters by using different configurations and operating scenarios. These can take into account the energy and power needs of each community activities and the natural resources (water access, solar radiation) of sites. According to the location of the consumption points, some constraints and decision rules have to be defined and taken into account in the optimization method. As example, data collected in rural communities from Niger Republic (West Africa) are used in this study.