Community microgrid planning in Lombok Island: an Indonesian case study

Rural electrification, diesel generator replacement, and resilient electrification systems against natural disasters are among the main targets for Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) in Indonesia to achieve a universally accessible, resilient, and environment-friendly electricity supply. Microgrids, therefore, become a popular and available way to achieve the aforementioned targets due to their flexibility and resiliency. This paper aims to provide a resilience-oriented planning strategy for community microgrids in Lombok Island, Indonesia. A mixed-integer linear program, implemented in the distributed energy resources customer adoption model (DER-CAM), is presented in this paper to find the optimal technology portfolio, placement, capacity, and optimal dispatch in a community microgrid. The multinode model is adopted for the planning, and hence, power flow constraints, N-1 contingency, and technology constraints are considered. The results show that the placement of photovoltaic (PV) arrays, battery energy storage systems (BESSs), and diesel generators (DGs) as backup sources in multi-node community microgrids lead to multiple benefits, including 100% rural electrification, over 25% cost savings, as well as over 22%, in particular CO₂ emission reduction in multinode community microgrids.