Energy system design and optimization for off-grid communities

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While the vast majority of Canadians benefit from robust and secure energy supplies, there are many remote, off-grid Canadian communities that continue to rely on diesel fueled power plants for their electrical energy. A significant portion of these communities are located on the nation's vast coastlines where grid interconnections are geographically blocked by waterways and mountains, and so mitigating the diesel consumption can not be easily overcome by grid expansion. Rather, local sources of clean energy must be located and integrated into the existing diesel generation plants to form hybrid kW scale energy systems. While alternative energy generation technologies have matured, the natural phenomenon that drive these generators are natural processes that are subject to random fluctuations, and subsequent fluctuations in the energy supply must still be managed. Even when the alternative energy generator can provide a suitable magnitude of energy over a long term, the short term fluctuations that occur within that span of time may require compensatory actions at the diesel power plant that negate much of the advantage being sought. These short term complications present great risk to small communities trying to improve their energy system when accumulated over the 20 year lifetime of a community power plant. To facilitate informed design of hybrid energy systems that improve quality of life in remote off-grid communities, computational models can be used to devise plant designs and control strategies that eliminate these short term complications. In the proposed project, a high-resolution time domain modeling tool for kW scale community energy systems will be developed and applied to a case study community of Hot Springs Cove located on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. In the case study, conceptual designs for a new reservoir and micro-hydro power plant will be evaluated on the basis of sustainability (e.g. green house gas mitigation), economic (e.g. levelized cost of energy) and technical performance (e.g. stability of the energy supply) metrics.