Coupling Water Energy Food Nexus and multi-year microgrid planning

Abstract

This paper proposes a business model based on the Water Energy Food (WEF) nexus that could benefit from advanced optimal planning tools based on techniques of multi-year optimization under uncertainties. The authors highlight the potential impact of WEF nexus in the mini-grid sector and suggest that appropriate forecasts and optimization tools are needed for complex and capital-intensive WEF-based projects. Traditional sizing techniques are not sufficient for microgrid projects due to their uncertain demand growth, which can be up to tenfold in ten years in some cases. The authors suggest that multi-year optimization models could lead to potential expense reductions of 20% in terms of Net Present Cost and 50% of initial investment budget. The proposed business model aims to de-risk investment through reliable/stable anchor loads and attract private capital from agri-food and public sectors to decrease energy-related capital investment. The authors suggest that energy and agri-food finance could jointly act to pursue a multiplier impact on local development and project bankability.

Full text

Coupling Water Energy Food Nexus and
multi-year microgrid planning
Davide Fioriti, Tommaso Ferrucci, Davide Poli
University of Pisa
Carlo Tacconelli, Valeria Gambino, Francesco Roncallo, Paolo Cherubini
EnGreen
Davide Fioriti 1
The University of Pisa was partially supported by the SETADISMA project that is part of
the LEAP-RE programme. LEAP-RE has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under Grant Agreement 963530.
4th Int. Conference on Solar Technologies & Hybrid Mini Grids to improve energy access – Mallorca, Spain 26-28 April

Water Energy Food (WEF) nexus
Davide Fioriti 2
FAO. The water-energy-food nexus: A new approach in support of food security and sustainable agriculture. Rome The Food and Agricultural Organisation of
the United Nations, 2014.

Standard vs WEF approaches
Davide Fioriti 3
The standard electricity operator The WEF operator
Aresti, M., et al. "RE-Thinking Access to Energy Business Models: Ways to Walk the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Talk in Sub-Saharan Africa." Res4Africa Foundation: Rome, Italy
(2019).

Standard vs WEF approaches
Davide Fioriti 4
The standard microgrid operator The WEF operator
Aresti, M., et al. "RE-Thinking Access to Energy Business Models: Ways to Walk the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Talk in Sub-Saharan Africa." Res4Africa Foundation: Rome, Italy
(2019).
•Easier (Business-as-usual)
•Lower upfront costs
•Lower local impact
•Uncertain demand uptake
•Complex (+agribusiness player)
•Higher upfront costs
•Higher local impact
•More controllable demand uptake
+
+
+
+
-
-
-
-

Planning tools for WEF approaches
Davide Fioriti 5
•High investment costs
•Long-term investments
•Uncertainties
•Multiple income/cost sources
Need for stochastic
multi-year planning tools

Multi-year vs single-year simulations
Davide Fioriti 6
Initial design
Demand (kWh)
1-year simulation
(standard approach)
Davide Fioriti, Davide Poli, Pablo Duenas-Martinez, Ignacio Perez-Arriaga, Multi-year stochastic planning of off-grid microgrids subject to significant load growth uncertainty:
overcoming single-year methodologies, Electric Power Systems Research, Volume 194, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2021.107053

Multi-year vs single-year simulations
Davide Fioriti 7
Initial design
Multi-year simulation
Demand (kWh)
1-year simulation
(standard approach)
Upgrade
Davide Fioriti, Davide Poli, Pablo Duenas-Martinez, Ignacio Perez-Arriaga, Multi-year stochastic planning of off-grid microgrids subject to significant load growth uncertainty:
overcoming single-year methodologies, Electric Power Systems Research, Volume 194, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2021.107053

Multi-year vs single-year simulations
Davide Fioriti 8
Initial design
Multi-year simulation
Demand (kWh)
1-year simulation
(standard approach)
Upgrades
+ Uncertainties
Davide Fioriti, Davide Poli, Pablo Duenas-Martinez, Ignacio Perez-Arriaga, Multi-year stochastic planning of off-grid microgrids subject to significant load growth uncertainty:
overcoming single-year methodologies, Electric Power Systems Research, Volume 194, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2021.107053

Multi-year vs single-year simulations
Davide Fioriti 9
Davide Fioriti, Davide Poli, Pablo Duenas-Martinez, Ignacio Perez-Arriaga, Multi-year stochastic planning of off-grid microgrids subject to significant load growth uncertainty:
overcoming single-year methodologies, Electric Power Systems Research, Volume 194, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2021.107053
Benefits of multi-year simulations:
•Realistic simulation of the multi-year lifetime of the system
•Assets and storage degradation
•Account for upgrades on the system
•Accounting for uncertainties in the load growth

The system
Davide Fioriti 10
The local generation The network
Images by Matteo Ceccarelli, University of Pisa

The modelling system
Davide Fioriti 11
Multi-Year Stochastic planning
for microgrid
Multi-Year Planning
of networked microgrid
•Multi-year stochastic studies
•Effect of operating strategy
(predictive, load following, …)
•Scalable open-source tools
•Address multi-microgrid conditions
•Multi-year models (soon stochastic)

Multiobjective goals
Davide Fioriti 12
Trade-off between economic indicators
Trade-off between non-economic indicators
Davide Fioriti, et al, Coupling economic multi-objective optimization and multiple design options: A business-oriented approach to size an off-grid hybrid microgrid, International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy
Systems, Volume 127, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijepes.2020.106686
Davide Fioriti, Davide Poli, Pablo Duenas-Martinez, Andrea Micangeli, Multiple design options for sizing off-grid microgrids: A novel single-objective approach to support multi-criteria decision making, Sustainable
Energy, Grids and Networks, Volume 30, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.segan.2022.100644

Example of results
Davide Fioriti 13
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
Multi-year
stochastic
Multi-year
deterministic
Single-year
CAPEX [k$]
CAPEX
900
950
1000
1050
1100
1150
1200
Multi-year
stochastic
Multi-year
deterministic
Single-year
NPC [k$]
Net Present Cost
-20% NPC
-50% CAPEX
Davide Fioriti, Davide Poli, Pablo Duenas-Martinez, Ignacio Perez-Arriaga, Multi-year stochastic planning of off-grid microgrids subject to significant load growth uncertainty:
overcoming single-year methodologies, Electric Power Systems Research, Volume 194, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsr.2021.107053

Synergies with WEF
Davide Fioriti 14
•Capture the multi-year dynamics of WEF
•WEF affect resources and uncertainty estimation
•More resilient and accurate investment evaluations

EnGreen Experience
Tommaso Ferrucci 15

EnGreen Experience
Tommaso Ferrucci 16
Aresti, M., et al. "RE-Thinking Access to Energy Business Models: Ways to Walk the Water-Energy-Food Nexus Talk in Sub-Saharan Africa." Res4Africa Foundation: Rome, Italy
(2019).

Thank you
Davide Fioriti 17
Davide Fioriti, Tommaso Ferrucci
DESTEC, University of Pisa
Largo Lucio Lazzarino, 1
Pisa (PI), Italy
davide.fioriti@unipi.it
The University of Pisa was partially supported by the SETADISMA project that is part of
the LEAP-RE programme. LEAP-RE has received funding from the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under Grant Agreement 963530.
https://www.engreensolutions.com/
info@engreensolutions.com