Environmental and financial impact assessment of off-grid microgrids with energy storage and PV

This paper investigates the environmental and financial effects of adding solar PV and storage to off-grid microgrids to reduce or remove diesel usage. A simulation study including a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and a financial model is presented for a military base use case. Hereby three scenarios are investigated; a baseline with only diesel usage (I), a number of diesel reduction scenarios (II) and a diesel removal scenario (III). The results show that in Scenario II a 24-30% diesel reduction can be achieved, leading to a 22-27% kg CO2 eq. per kWh reduction and a 23-27% cost reduction in respect to Scenario I. Scenario III shows that a complete diesel removal is possible leading to a 75% kg CO2 eq. per kWh reduction and a 43-68% cost reduction.