Microgrid Design Toolkit Cost Optimization for a Rural Community in Puerto Rico

Hurricanes Irma and Maria had a devastating effect on communities all around Puerto Rico and highlighted the lack of resilience of the island's power system. After months without electric service, and being left with unreliable service years later, community leaders are looking for alternatives to fulfill their energy needs. Three microgrid design alternatives for a rural community that consider centralized and decentralized diesel generation, energy storage, and photovoltaic (PV) generation are evaluated in this paper. Design basis threats and performance metrics are defined with community feedback and requirements. The Microgrid Design Toolkit (MDT) was used to run multi-objective optimization, including cost, performance, and sizing optimization. The trade-off space of solutions for the three alternatives is presented in the form of a Pareto frontier. Optimization results for the centralized alternative slightly favor diesel and big storage. However, for less aggregated alternatives, the optimization algorithm favors solar generation leading to higher renewable penetration.