The establishment of the concept of sustainable, decentralised, multi-carrier energy systems, together with the declining costs of renewable energy technologies, has proposed changes in off-grid electrification interventions towards the development of integrated energy systems. Notwithstanding the potential benefits, the optimal capacity planning of such systems with multiple energy carriers—electricity, heating, cooling, hydrogen, biogas—is exceedingly complex due to the concurrent goals and interrelated constraints that must be relaxed. To this end, this paper puts forward an innovative new optimal capacity planning method for a first-of-its-kind stand-alone multiple energy carrier microgrid (MECM) serving the electricity, hot water, and transportation fuel demands of remote communities. The proposed off-grid MECM system is equipped with solar photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, a hydrogen-based energy storage system—including an electrolyser, a hydrogen reservoir, and a fuel cell—a hybrid super-capacitor/battery energy storage system, a hot water storage tank, a heat exchanger, an inline electric heater, a hydrogen refuelling station, and some power converters. The main objective of calculating the optimal size of the conceptualised isolated MECM’s components through minimising the associated lifetime costs is fulfilled by a specifically developed meta-heuristic-based solution algorithm subject to a set of operational and planning constraints. To evaluate the utility and effectiveness of the proposed method, as well as the technical feasibility and economic viability of the suggested grid-independent MECM layout, a numerical case study was carried out for Rakiura–Stewart Island, Aotearoa–New Zealand. Notably, the numeric simulation results highlight that the optimal solution presents a low-risk, high-yield investment opportunity, which is able to save the diesel-dependent community a significant 54% in electricity costs (including electrified space heating)—if financed as a community renewable energy project—apart from providing a cost-effective and resilient platform to serve the hot water and transportation fuel needs.

Recent reports from international energy agencies indicate that more than a billion of the population in the world is deprived of basic electricity provisions, confined mainly to the remote communities of developing nations. Microgrids are promoted as a potential technology for electricity provisions to off-grid rural communities, but have failed to reach their value proposition in the context of rural electrification access. In view of the rampant rural electrification issues, the objective of this paper is to furnish an understanding of, and advance the knowledge into, methods to facilitate the design and development of microgrid systems for remote communities in developing countries. The methodology involves an integrative review process of an annotated bibliography to summarise past empirical or theoretical literature. As such, this research is based on evaluation attributes, and identifies the challenges and barriers for remote microgrids through an analysis of 19 case studies. The paper concludes by proposing key aspects that need to be considered for developing a framework to improve the sustainability of electricity provisions for off-grid rural communities in developing countries.

In the grid-tied micro-grid context, energy resilience can be defined as the time period that a local energy system can supply the critical loads during an unplanned upstream grid outage. While the role of renewable-based micro-grids in enhancing communities’ energy resilience is well-appreciated, the academic literature on the techno-economic optimisation of community-scale micro-grids lacks a quantitative decision support analysis concerning the inclusion of a minimum resilience constraint in the optimisation process. Utilising a specifically-developed, time-based resilience capacity characterisation method to quantify the sustainability of micro-grids in the face of different levels of extended grid power outages, this paper facilitates stakeholder decision-making on the trade-off between the whole-life cost of a community micro-grid system and its degree of resilience. Furthermore, this paper focuses on energy infrastructure expansion planning, aiming to analyse the importance of micro-grid reinforcement to meet new sources of electricity demand—particularly, transport electrification—in addition to the business-as-usual demand growth. Using quantitative case study evidence from the Totarabank Subdivision in New Zealand, the paper concludes that at the current feed-in-tariff rate (NZ$0.08/kWh), the life cycle profitability of resilience-oriented community micro-grid capacity reinforcement is guaranteed within a New Zealand context, though constrained by capital requirements.

The utilisation of solar resources has become of utmost importance for the transition of the global, carbon intensive economy. In New Zealand the uptake of solar energy has increased substantially, but the relative contribution to the overall energy mix is still small. Previous research efforts on the solar resource across the country are revisited with improved satellite‐modelled data from Solargis to derive a solar atlas for the country. A comparison is made with NIWA data, which shows that the modelled data are at an adequate level of accuracy and improves our understanding of the solar resource at an appropriate spatial and temporal resolution. The solar atlas makes available a commercial satellite data source and informs further investigations into how solar can, and will, play a more meaningful role in our transition to a low carbon future.