Strategy for developing energy systems for remote communities: Insights to best practices and sustainability

Energy planners and policymakers have identified off-grid energy systems as an option for electrifying remote communities around the globe. Such systems could be fueled by either non-renewable or renewable energy resources, but because of the issue of climate change and the compelling need for environmental sustainability, the global community is strongly advocating the use of eco-friendly energy technologies. Renewable energy technologies are therefore deployed for clean energy production, especially in places where there are vast renewable energy resources. However, while there is high optimism about such technologies, there is a lack of knowledge and understanding of the strategies necessary to successfully develop them for off-grid communities. This invariably leads to poor, unreliable and unsustainable systems. This paper introduces enabling strategies for developing energy systems in remote communities, with the aim of achieving sustainability. The planning approaches attempt to integrate the necessary processes and stakeholders during the pre-design, detailed design, implementation and post-implementation stages, with reference to global engineering standards. We present a user-centered approach and also introduce design safety and load growth factors into the energy supply system sizing model for achieving reliable systems. Two different remote communities in Nigeria are used to test the proposed design approaches. The results demonstrate how the issue of a lack of knowledge could be addressed, thus, providing useful approaches for achieving widespread deployment of distributed energy generation projects for isolated communities around the world.