Oloo, Fiona RANombakuse, ZMdhluli, Sipho DRampokanyo, M2025-10-312025-10-312025-10http://hdl.handle.net/10204/14457Approximately 94 % of South Africa’s population has electricity access, but there are still several remote communities that do not have electricity access. These communities use energy sources such as wood and charcoal, but these can pose a significant health risk. Thus, a least-cost microgrid electricity plan and associated optimization studies are proposed for five select remote unelectrified rural communities in South Africa using HOMER Pro® software. The energy sources considered for optimization are solar, wind, hydropower and battery storage. Diesel were not considered due to security concerns in the remote communities and challenges that are associated with fuel management. Two main scenarios were considered for the optimization. This first scenario was based on meeting the current estimated load demand of the microgrids. The peak demand in the first scenario of each of the villages was 18 kW, 43.46 kW, 36.2 kW, 26.08 kW, 76.5 kW respectively. The second scenario was based on meeting the future demand growth that considers oversizing the demand by 30 % to account for economic development and expected community growth. Both scenarios considered the impact of maximum allowed capacity shortages between 0% - 50 % to evaluate the impact on investment cost and Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE). Reducing the cost of energy with an increasing capacity shortage had to be balanced with the fact that communities prefer consistent power supply. Therefore, for all the villages, the results show that a maximum allowed capacity shortage of 10 % appeared be the most cost-effective option for all the scenarios. From the optimization studies, solar PV and battery storage is the most optimal combination in both scenarios, for four of the five village locations. The most optimal combination for fifth village is hydropower and battery storage. The LCOE values range from R 4.77/kWh - R 5.5/kWh for the villages in the first scenario and R 4.8/kWh - R 5.48/kWh for the villages in the second scenario. In all the villages, considerable excess electricity was produced with one of the villages resulting in excess energy up to about 80 % This significantly contributes the LCOE values obtained. Therefore, the study has shown that considerations must be made for designing off grid microgrids with the intent to fully utilise the excess electricity productively and decrease the resulting LCOE.FulltextenLeast-cost microgridHOMER Pro®Levelized Cost of EnergyLCOESolarWindHydropowerBattery storageConference Presentationn/a