Abstract
Electrical energy scarcity is quite a major concern for rural communities in developing countries. The socio-economic expansion of every nation comes as a result of industrial development. Therefore, electrical energy consists of a substantial commodity that fuels and sustains development and economic expansion. In developing countries, urban areas usually have grid electricity while rural areas are mostly without electricity access. In many cases, rural communities are remotely located, and therefore away from grid infrastructure (power lines). Grid expansion for electricity supply to remote rural areas is often not an economically viable option as a result of the high cost of investment incurred by utility companies, poor returns, and insignificantly low scale of economic activity in remotely located rural areas. The use of mini-grids/microgrids is reported to be the most economically viable and technically acceptable approach to providing electricity to remotely located areas. However, despite the low investment cost generally associated with the establishment of mini-grids/microgrids as an alternative for rural electrification through grid electricity, access to electricity in Sub-Saharan African (SSA) rural communities is still not at a comfortable pace, which could guarantee the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030. The fundamental challenge for this shortcoming remains the lack of a policy framework capable of balancing community affordability, supply cost (availability), and reliability to accelerate community access to electricity in these communities. Available literature in this field suggests that most policy options proposed to support investment in renewable energy (RE)-based mini-grids/micro-grids mainly focus on the cost of generating electricity, and not on the affordability model of rural community dwellers, which in most cases are poverty-stricken. Therefore, three case studies of RE-based microgrids implemented in Limpopo, North of South Africa, are used as the basis of analysis to formulating a sustainable policy framework that may promote affordable access to electricity by rural community dwellers. In each of these scenarios, the availability of renewable energy resources was investigated using hybrid optimization of multiple energy resources (HOMER) after load assessment. The optimal microgrid system architecture is established using the analytical comparison between net present cost (NPC), cost of energy (COE), a renewable fraction (RF), and loss power supply probability (LPSP). A proposed grid-tied microgrid system architecture is opted for based on the minimum COE, minimum NPC, minimum LPSP, and greatest RF. The techno-economic assessment of the RE-based microgrid was conducted based on real-time data of the selected geographical areas obtained through HOMER software. MATLAB software was also used for system reliability
iv
analysis. The six-step policy technique has been used to validate the effectiveness of the proposed policy framework. The proposed policy suggests that unless consumer or rural community affordability is accounted for, an increase in electricity access, as a result of investment in microgrids/mini-grids, cannot be achieved in remotely located areas of South Africa.