Using system dynamics for long term bottom-up electric load modeling in rural electrification

Paper in proceeding, 2016

One billion people lack access to electricity, most of whom live in rural areas in developing countries. A solution to improve their situation is small independent grids, so called minigrids. One of the major challenges for minigrids is to become economically reliable. As electricity usage is a major source of income for a utility, it is important to consider how its fluctuations impacts a utility. This work presents an integration of a previously developed system dynamics model with a comparably detailed bottom-up load model developed in MATLAB. The simulations show that while using a more detailed load model results in an increase in generation capacity expansion frequency and that the investments are made in smaller sizes. Due to the different approach to integrating electricity usage growth, the bottom-up load model shows a faster increase in electricity usage than the system dynamics load model. With a modeled difference on net income, power utilization rate and electricity usage the results indicate that it is important to consider improved load model detail when modeling income and expenditures of an electric utility.