Techno-Economic Analysis of On-grid Transition: A Case Study of Remote Villages in Sarawak

Providing access to affordable and sustainable energy to remote areas is one of the key electrification challenges in developing countries to support their social and economic growth. Given the sparsely populated rural villages in underdeveloped regions, the on-grid transition for these off-grid powered villages requires proper system planning, which is often constrained by environmental and economic factors. In this regard, this paper presents a techno-economic analysis for the on-grid electrification transition for 192 remote villages in Sarawak, which are currently electrified through the solar-battery standalone off-grid system under Sarawak Alternative Rural Electrification Scheme (SARES). To achieve this, a fractal-based distribution network model was utilised to develop the proposed network topology for enabling the off-grid to on-grid electrification transition. In addition, the proposed on-grid rural networks were designed in accordance with the technical planning requirements provided by the local electricity utility. Comprehensive cost-benefit analyses were carried out to provide an in-depth breakdown of the associated network expansion costs to the local electricity utility. The results show over 80% of the total on-grid transition network cost is contributed by the capital and installation costs for the power lines. In addition, the study further confirmed that the SARES scheme is a cost-effective solution to provide electricity supply to the remotest villages where it is not economically viable for connection to the main grid.