Feasibility Study of PV & Li-Ion Battery Based Micro-Grids for Bolivian Off-Grid Communities

In the rural areas of Bolivia, where about a third of the people lacks access to reliable electricity, both a complex geography and a scattered population make the costs of extending the national grid prohibitively high. As an alternative, we evaluate the feasibility of an isolated micro-grid, composed by Li-ion batteries and Photovoltaic (PV) panels, for a Bolivian remote community living without access to electricity. We surveyed two remote rural villages to assess the potential electricity consumption patterns of the population once provided access to electricity. We estimated the average demand profile using the tool LoadProGen, and we collected local techno-economic and solar irradiation data of the zone. We employed such data as inputs in a robust linear programming-based optimization tool to determine the capacities of the Li-ion battery bank and the PV array thatminimize the net present cost (NPC) of the system.