Input data for an off-grid electrification project design could be generally divided into three types: social, technical and energy data of the community.
The characteristics resulting from the social evaluation are the following:
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Users' position;
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Electrical energy and power demand of each user.
The technical and energy characteristics are the following:
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Resource available in the area (i.e. daily energy production with all types of generators in every possible generation point);
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Technical data of generation, storage, control and distribution equipments;
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Costs of all the equipments.
The involved area in an off-grid electrification project is generally between 1 × 1 till 10 × 10 km2 and the number of households of a community is generally between 10 and 100 users [7] and [28]. Wind resource could vary considerably within the area of a community, especially in mountainous areas [4], while the solar resource is generally considered uniform at this scale