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.

Potential Impact:
Through the development of novel stochastic simulation and optimization models for rural electrification planning and their validation in collaboration with the project academic and industrial partners, this project will be of significant timeliness, relevance and appropriateness to a wide range of stakeholders. This includes system operators, energy producers, manufacturers, policy makers and regulators which will benefit from our research by getting a comprehensive quantitative understanding of emerging energy technologies and a set of engineering and policy recommendations for changes at different levels, including planning, design, operation, monitoring, and maintenance practices and standards (forming the basis for ISO standards) for rural electrification. Such knowledge would benefit the long-term operational viability of the newly designed rural energy networks and contribute to measuring their potential long-term impact in developing countries. The proposed work may also lead to recognition that such support through a formal regulatory and commercial framework would increase revenue streams to those new and transformative technologies that can provide low-carbon energy services, while contributing to resilience under natural hazards. The research team will ensure that the research outcomes will be of generic applicability and validity and will also be internationally disseminated (through, for example, the relevant IEEE Task Force on understanding and measuring power systems resilience with which the research team maintains strong links, talks and panels at world-leading relevant international conferences and publication of research articles in high impact journals) to support and strengthen the international development importance of this research. This work will also be of great importance to the industrial partners and stakeholders of the project. This includes key partners in Malaysia, where the proposed research will support the improvement of the Rural Power Supply Scheme that was formulated in 2015, contributing towards achieving energy security to remote communities. In China, this project will provide vital insights on the criticality of the energy products manufactured by Clenergy (including PV-mounting products and solutions for residential, commercial and utility scale customers) and how can these technologies be utilized to the benefit of remote communities in China. In Chile (as an external project partner), the research team will continue the fruitful collaboration with leading Chilean Universities and stakeholders (including University of Chile, Pontificia Universidad Catolica and Chilean system operator) to understand how low-carbon distributed energy resources can contribute to the energy sustainability and resilience of rural regions. To facilitate the active and constructive knowledge exchange with the project industrial partners and stakeholders, several forms of interaction have been planned by the research team, including advisory board meetings, regular physical and web-conferenced meetings and technical workshops. Appropriate socio-economic and engineering quantitative metrics and indicators will be jointly developed with the project LMIC industrial and academic partners for measuring the impact of the research proposed in the LMIC context, with focus on the improvement of the social and economic well-being of the rural communities and the long-term usability and financial support of the proposed energy networks. Within this context, the research team has developed a thorough user-engagement strategy which will enable the active participation of the local partners and communities to the design of the new energy networks from the initial stages of the project, which will contribute to the social acceptance and adoption of the proposed energy technologies. This would ensure that the proposed energy networks can facilitate the energy needs of local communities, going beyond home lightning.