Sustainability evaluation in power system related applications — A review

Recently lots of new technologies are introduced at the distribution level, and the distribution system is facing challenges on technology and management during reforming toward an Active Distribution System. The sustainability evaluation (SE) fits the new era better than the conventional reliability and economic evaluation. In this regard, by reviewing recent works on sustainability evaluation, the paper summarizes and compares the common components of SE at various levels, such as energy system, power system planning and management, rural electrification, and generation technologies. Solutions on special issues are reviewed, including unbalanced development among various dimensions, the correlations among indicators, the verification of the aggregated sustainability indices, and the significance of different dimensions. The interaction among components which consist of the system and the different periodic changes that each components experience make the development of the system dynamic and nonlinear. Dynamic system approach could capture the complexity that the system demonstrates and be applicable for SE. The dynamic system approach based SE will be a good complement for indicator based SE.