TERSE: Techno-Economic framework for Resilient and Sustainable Electrification

农村电气化对发展中国家的社会和经济发展及福祉至关重要，因为它支持至关重要的基础设施（如通信和运输）的发展，并为提高人们日常生活质量的关键服务（如家用电器、保健和供水）提供能源。缺乏或有限且极不可靠的电力供应仍然是这些国家农村和偏远社区面临的主要挑战之一。为了使电气化超越闪电，发展可持续、具有成本效益、可扩展且具有弹性的能源网络至关重要，特别是在经常遭受自然灾害（如洪水、季风等）的地区。在这种情况下，该项目的目标是开发一种新的整体技术经济框架，以支持和实现发展中国家设计变革性能源网络的决策、政策和监管制定。这一整体框架将得到可持续电气化选择组合的支持，包括基础设施解决方案（例如建设新的或升级现有的基础设施）和新兴的低碳分布式能源，这些能源将重点放在可持续微电网（并网和离网）的发展上。此外，将开发综合系统模拟模型来分析脆弱性，并量化这些能源解决方案对自然灾害和极端天气的风险和恢复能力。鉴于此类事件在世界范围内的影响的最新证据，这是非常及时的，如果农村社区要承受并迅速从此类灾难性事件中恢复过来，这也是非常关键的。在这些分析之后，将开发随机优化规划技术来支持这些能源网络的优化设计，考虑到变革的能源技术，以最大限度地提高对当地社区福祉的影响。在最后一点的基础上，研究团队制定了一个结构良好的用户参与战略，将面临电气化挑战的社区的更广泛的社会经济方面联系起来。该战略的目标是深入了解伙伴国家（中国和马来西亚）农村社区的电力需求，使其在项目中发挥积极作用，并就新能源技术在这些社区的应用提供简报和培训课程。英国和海外研究团队将与当地工业伙伴共同努力，促进偏远村庄、社区及其地方当局的积极参与。该项目旨在补充和进一步加强伙伴国家（即马来西亚和中国）目前的电气化计划。研究团队将与沙捞越能源公司和马来西亚其他有关部门密切合作，审查和改进其2015年制定的农村供电计划，并评估和改进中国舟山群岛现有微电网的设计、可操作性和维护规划，这些微电网也将作为验证项目开发的仿真模型的优秀试验台。在此背景下，本项目还将旨在为改变和改进标准、管理和决策框架提出建议。我们的目标是使这项工作的主要发现和建议具有普遍适用性和有效性，以适应其国际发展重要性。这对英国国家来说也很重要，因为建设可持续能源网络以减少碳足迹，同时应对极端天气（例如，1987年、2007年和2015年导致重大停电的风暴）是保障国家社会和经济福祉的关键。

Rural electrification is fundamental for the social and economic development and well-being of developing countries, as it supports the development of vital critical infrastructures (e.g. communication and transportation) and it provides energy to critical services to peoples' quality of everyday life, such as home appliances, health and water supply. The lack or limited and highly unreliable access to electricity still remains one of the key challenges that rural and remote communities face in these countries. In order though for the electrification to go beyond lightning, it is critical to develop energy networks that are sustainable, cost-effective, and scalable, as well as resilient, particularly in areas that are frequently exposed to natural hazards, such as floods, monsoons, etc. In this context, the ambition of this project is to develop a novel holistic techno-economic framework for supporting and enabling the decision, policy and regulatory making towards the design of transformative energy networks in developing countries. This holistic framework will be supported by the development of an options portfolio for sustainable electrification, including a mixture of infrastructure solutions (e.g. building new or upgrading existing infrastructure) and emerging low-carbon distributed energy resources that will focus on the development of sustainable microgrids (both grid-connected and off-grid). Further, integrated system simulation models will be developed to analyse the vulnerability and quantify the risk and resilience profile of these energy solutions to natural hazards and extreme weather. This is is highly timely given the latest evidence of the impact of such events worldwide and also highly critical if the rural communities are to withstand and quickly recover from such catastrophic events. Following these analyses, stochastic optimization planning techniques will be developed to support the optimal design of these energy networks, considering transformative energy technologies, to maximize the impact on the well-being of local communities.Building on this last point, the research team has developed a well-structured user-engagement strategy, bridging to wider socio-economic aspects of communities facing electrification challenges. The aims of this strategy are to get an in-depth understanding of the electricity needs of rural communities in the partner countries (China and Malaysia), enable their active role in the project and provide briefing and training sessions on the use of the new energy technologies to be applied in these communities. The UK and overseas research teams will jointly work with the local industrial partners to facilitate this active involvement of remote villages, communities and their local authorities. This project will aim to complement and further strengthen the current electrification plans of the partner countries, i.e. Malaysia and China. The research team will work closely with Sarawak Energy and other authorities in Malaysia to review and improve its Rural Power Supply Scheme that was formulated in 2015, as well as evaluate and improve the design, operability and maintenance planning of existing microgrids in Zhoushan islands, China, which also serve as excellent testbeds for validating the simulation models developed by the project. Within this context, this project will also aim to develop recommendations for changes and improvements in standards, regulatory and policy-making frameworks. We will aim to make the key findings and recommendations of this work of generic applicability and validity to accommodate its international development importance. This would also be of UK national importance, where building sustainable energy networks for reducing its carbon footprint, while being resilient to extreme weather (e.g., the storms of 1987, 2007 and 2015 which resulted in major power outages) is key for safeguarding the social and economic well-being of the country.