TITLE:
Sustainable and Economic Alternative for the Electric Supply of Isolated Communities in the Brazilian Off-Grid Systems
AUTHORS:
Rebeca Doctors, Rafael Kelman
KEYWORDS:
Off-Grid, Hybrid Systems, Public Policy, Solar Photovoltaic, HOMER
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Power and Energy Engineering,
Vol.5 No.9,
September
29,
2017
ABSTRACT: Roughly 99% of the demand for electricity in Brazil is supplied by a national interconnected grid. The remaining 1% is spread in several “isolated systems” of the Amazon region—mini-grids that rely on expensive diesel gensets due to high commodity and transportation costs. The isolated systems also have remote communities disconnected altogether from the mini-grids with inadequate health, education and leisure services. These communities are precariously supplied by small inefficient diesel gensets that run for a few hours per day. In this article, we propose a sustainable and economic alternative for the electric supply of the remote communities of isolated systems through a combination of photovoltaic solar generation and storage. The objective is to improve access to electricity with savings for the communities. The present paper outlines a public policy to meet this objective.