Sustainable Energy System Planning in Developing Countries: A Decision Support System Considering Variations Over Time

Abstract

Planning energy systems is subject to changes in components’ health and installation costs, fossil fuel prices, and load demand. Especially in developing countries, electrical loads are reported to increase drastically after electrification. Improper sizing of the energy system’s components can lead to reduced environmental sustainability, decreased reliability, and long-term project failures. As no tools for energy system planning exist that aim at developing countries and sufficiently account for temporal variations, we modify the software NESSI4D in a design science cycle to provide the comprehensive decision support system NESSI4D+. We conduct an applicability check with a representative rural village in mountainous Nepal that validates NESSI4D+’s relevance and shows the importance of considering temporal variations for economically, ecologically, and socially long-term sustainable energy projects.