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Rural areas in developing countries have the highest concentrations of unelectrified communities. There is a clear link between electricity consumption and the Human Development Index, as highlighted by the 7th Development Goal of the United Nations. Estimating the energy needs of the previously nonelectrified population is imprecise when designing rural electrification projects. Indeed, daily energy demand and peak power assessments are complex, since these values must be valid over the project’s lifetime, while tight budgets do not allow for the systems to be oversized. In order to assist project promoters, this study proposes a fuzzy mixed integer linear programming model (FMILP) for the design of wind–PV rural electrification systems including uncertainty in the demand requirements. Two different FMILP approaches were developed that maximized the minimum or the average satisfaction of the users. Next, the FMILP approaches were applied to six Latin American communities from three countries. Compared with the deterministic MILP (where the energy and peak power needs are considered as specific values), the FMILP results achieved a better balance between the project cost and the users’ satisfaction regarding the energy and peak power supplied. Regarding the two approaches, maximizing the users’ minimum satisfaction obtained globally better solutions., Postprint (published version)

Access to electricity for the rural and indigenous population of Ecuador’s Amazon Region (RAE) is considered a critical issue by the national authorities. The RAE is an isolated zone with communities scattered throughout the rainforest, where the expansion of the national grid is not a viable option. Therefore, autonomous electrification systems based on solar energy constitute an important solution, allowing the development of indigenous populations. This work proposes a tool for the design of stand-alone rural electrification systems based on photovoltaic technologies, including both microgrid or individual supply configurations. This tool is formulated as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming model including economic, technical and social aspects. This approach is used to design electrification systems (equipment location and sizing, microgrid configurations) in three real communities of the RAE. The results highlight the benefits of the developed tool and provide guidelines regarding RAE’s electrification., Peer Reviewed, Postprint (published version)