Evaluation of an autonomous microgrid for rural electrification in Zahedan, Sistan Va Baluchestan

Electrification of rural places is always a big challenge. Such regions are usually far from utility grid, so an autonomous microgrid is a proper option to increase the availability of electricity in those places. Since Sistan Va Baluchestan has windy and sunny weather, it is proposed to use an autonomous microgrid including photovoltaic (PV), wind turbine (WT) and diesel generator based on synchronous generator (SG) its rural places. In the proposed model, SG keeps balance between generation and demand as a backup unit. When PV and WT are able to supply the rural load, SG goes to stand by mode and While PV and WT are not able to supply the customers, SG generates. In this scheme, to keep frequency within its nominal value, a specific strategy is used. In this strategy, some Non-Critical Loads (N-CLs) which are able to adjust their consumption based on the frequency variation are used. The dominant characteristic of this model is to control frequency without any storage. Different scenarios are defined to assess the successful performance of the system.