TERSE: Techno-Economic framework for Resilient and Sustainable Electrification

农村电气化对于发展中国家的社会和经济发展以及福祉至关重要，因为它支持重要关键基础设施（例如通信和交通）的发展，并为人们日常生活质量的关键服务提供能源，例如家用电器、健康和供水。电力供应不足或有限且极不可靠，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，开发可持续，具有成本效益，可扩展以及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的地区，如洪水，季风等，在这种情况下，该项目的目标是开发一个新的整体技术经济框架，以支持和实现决策，为发展中国家设计变革性能源网络制定政策和监管。这一整体框架将得到可持续电气化备选方案组合的支持，包括基础设施解决方案（例如，建设新的或升级现有基础设施）和新兴低碳分布式能源的混合，重点是发展可持续的微电网（并网和离网）。此外，还将开发综合系统模拟模型，以分析这些能源解决方案对自然灾害和极端天气的脆弱性，并量化其风险和复原能力。鉴于这类事件在全世界造成的影响的最新证据，这是非常及时的，而且如果农村社区要经受住这类灾难性事件并迅速从中恢复，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，以支持这些能源网络的优化设计，考虑变革性能源技术，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，与面临电气化挑战的社区的更广泛的社会经济方面建立联系。这一战略的目的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，使他们能够在项目中发挥积极作用，并提供关于在这些社区应用新能源技术的情况介绍和培训课程。英国和海外的研究团队将与当地的工业合作伙伴共同努力，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。该研究团队将与沙捞越能源公司和马来西亚其他当局密切合作，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，这些微电网也是验证该项目开发的模拟模型的优秀测试平台。在这一范围内，本项目还将致力于为标准、管理和决策框架的改革和改进提出建议。我们的目标是使这项工作的主要结论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。这也将是英国国家的重要性，在那里建立可持续的能源网络，以减少其碳足迹，同时对极端天气有弹性（例如，1987年、2007年和2015年的风暴导致了大规模停电，这是保障该国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.