Sizing of hybrid microgrids considering life cycle assessment

The sizing of microgrids consists of determining the capacity of its main elements, ensuring financial, technical, reliability and environmental criteria. However, regarding the environmental impact, most of the literature addresses this evaluation by exclusively quantifying the emissions in the microgrid operation stage, which tends to underestimate the life cycle ecological cost of the microgrid’s elements. In this sense, this paper proposes a sizing approach that integrates the life cycle assessment of the implementation and operation stages by adapting a multi-objective function inspired by the well-known life cycle assessment methodology called ReCiPe. For this purpose, information from several sources was compiled and adapted to quantify different environmental impacts in the sizing formulation. A case study of a solar/wind/battery/diesel microgrid is presented, showing that calculating the environmental impact indicators considering only emissions in the operation leads to a value 54.60% lower than the proposed approach. It was also found that the underestimation of environmental indicators can lead to a selection of a more polluting microgrid sizing configuration, which remarks the relevance of an adequate environmental evaluation in the sizing procedure.