Abstract
In many developing nations, the carbon intensity of the grid is high while capacity is also constrained. Local distributed energy resources are expensive to deploy and own by private households. This work presents an optimisation-based approach to optimally locate renewable technologies at both local prosumer’s dwellings and at community-level locations, incorporating the addition of distribution lines in a distributed energy system (DES) model to implement a solar photovoltaic (PV) energy farm with energy storage at the community level in densely populated urban areas. A case study of three scenarios in Karachi, Pakistan is selected to test the model. Scenario 1 presents a decentralised approach where every node has the possibility to install batteries locally. Scenario 2 considers a more centralised approach where only 2 central battery nodes are connected to different residential nodes. Lastly, the scalability of the model is tested with Scenario 3 which considers a model with 4 times as many nodes. The optimisation model indicates the profitability of different centralised/decentralised approaches with the highest level of decentralisation showing both the lowest cost and highest profit made, demonstrating the trade-off between battery sizing and line costs for privatised local energy storage.