Source
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.114004 — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
Aberilla et al. (2020) — Design & Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Small-Scale Off-Grid Energy Systems for Remote Rural Communities
Open-access peer-reviewed LCA (Applied Energy, CC BY) designing and comparing 21 off-grid configurations (6 household-scale + 15 community micro-grids) of solar PV / micro-wind / diesel / lead-acid + Li-ion battery for a prototypical 50-household tropical-island rural community in the Philippines. Cradle-to-grave LCA across 18 impact categories, functional unit = 1 kWh. The value to NI is qualitative DESIGN PRINCIPLES, not transferable numbers — hybridisation of PV+wind cuts storage need ~70% and per-kWh impacts up to 40%; batteries are the environmental hotspot (up to 88% of mineral-depletion in home systems); household-scale PV + community-scale wind + Li-ion is the environmentally optimal architecture; adding a battery to a diesel genset cuts its fuel ~30% and impacts 20–30%. ⚠ Philippines tropical-island resource (solar 5.27 kWh/m²/day, wind 5.66 m/s @50 m) + Chinese-manufactured components → absolute GWP/kWh figures are NOT NZ-transferable; treat the relative comparisons and design directions as the calibration value. Resolves RT_032 (the doc CR_005 flagged for D01).
Summary
This study designs and evaluates the life-cycle environmental sustainability of 21 small-scale off-grid electricity systems — six for single households and fifteen as community micro-grids — for a prototypical remote rural community of 50 households in the Philippines (representative of a tropical off-grid island). Systems combine solar PV, micro-wind turbines, diesel generators and lead-acid or Li-ion battery storage; all are sized and dispatch-optimised in HOMER Pro and then assessed cradle-to-grave with LCA (GaBi + ReCiPe 1.08, 18 midpoint impact categories, functional unit = generation and supply of 1 kWh). It is the first integrated LCA comparing off-grid electrification across scales of distribution (stand-alone home vs community micro-grid), complementing the large existing body of techno-economic (cost) comparisons. Headline findings: hybridising PV and wind reduces both storage requirements (~70% less battery capacity) and per-kWh impacts (up to 40%) versus equivalent stand-alone installations; batteries are the dominant environmental hotspot (up to 88% of a home system’s mineral-resource depletion); the community hybrid PV-wind-lead-acid micro-grid (C-PV+WT+LA) has the lowest impacts in 10 of 18 categories; and the environmentally most sustainable overall configuration is a household-scale PV system integrated within a micro-grid using community-scale wind turbines and Li-ion batteries. It sits alongside the NZ off-grid community-microgrid studies already in the corpus — Rakiura/Stewart Island (LIT_033, LIT_068), Totarabank (LIT_032) and Great Barrier (LIT_031) — but as an environmental-LCA rather than cost lens, and internationally (Philippines) rather than NZ.
Key claims
- claim: "A total of 21 system configurations (six home systems and 15 micro-grids) have been designed and optimised for a prototypical rural community in the Philippines, considering both stand-alone and hybrid systems. Life cycle assessment (LCA) considering 18 potential impact categories has been carried out to compare the environmental impacts associated with electricity production of each option. Functional unit = 'generation and supply of 1 kWh of electricity'; scope cradle-to-grave; sized in HOMER Pro; LCA in GaBi ts 7.3 using ReCiPe 1.08 (hierarchist midpoint). Overall conclusion: a household-scale PV system integrated within a micro-grid with community-scale wind turbines and Li-ion batteries is environmentally the most sustainable configuration."
source_location: "Abstract; §3–3.2 Methodology; §3.2.3 (GaBi/ReCiPe); §5 Conclusions"
- claim: "Design context: prototypical rural community of 50 households, each with 'advanced access' demand of 3,000 kWh/household/year (8.22 kWh/day; community 411 kWh/day). Location 11°N, 120°E (tropical); annual average solar insolation 5.27 kWh/m²/day and annual average wind speed 5.66 m/s at 50 m (NASA SSE database). Community micro-grid options add a 1-km distribution network covering the 50 households over a 7-ha area. Only diesel gensets >8 kW considered (so diesel is community-scale only, not for single households); micro-wind sizes fixed at 5 kW (household) and 100 kW (community); polycrystalline-Si PV (roof-mounted household, ground-mounted community). Components assumed manufactured in China and shipped to the island."
source_location: "§3 (5.27 kWh/m²/day, 5.66 m/s, 1-km network, 7 ha); §3.1 (3,000 kWh/hh/yr, 50 households); §4.1.2 (411 kWh/day); §3.1 (diesel >8 kW, 5/100 kW wind); §3.2.2.2 (China manufacture)"
- claim: "Household-scale climate-change (GWP) results per kWh over the life cycle: H-PV+LA = 131 g CO2 eq./kWh; H-PV+LI = 105 g CO2 eq./kWh; H-WT+LA = 470 g CO2 eq./kWh; H-WT+LI = 440 g CO2 eq./kWh. In PV systems the dominant GHG source is fossil-fuel energy used to assemble the solar panels (>50%); in the wind systems the GHG hotspot is the fixed parts (>86%, up to 70% from stainless-steel production). Stand-alone wind-turbine systems have on average 60% higher impacts than the equivalent PV systems (household scale)."
source_location: "§4.2.1.1 Climate change (GWP): 131/105/470/440 g CO2 eq./kWh; §4.2.1.1 (60% higher wind vs PV)"
- claim: "Batteries are a major environmental hotspot: lead-acid batteries are responsible for 88% of the mineral-depletion potential (MDP) in the H-PV+LA home system (Li-ion 46%); overall, energy storage causes up to 88% of mineral-resource depletion in home systems and 78% in micro-grid systems. Comparing storage options per kWh capacity, Li-ion batteries have lower environmental impacts than lead-acid in most categories (except eutrophication FEP/MEP and human/terrestrial toxicity HTP/TETP)."
source_location: "§4.2.1.1 Resource depletion (FDP, MDP, WDP): 'Lead acid batteries are responsible for 88% of MDP in the H-PV + LA system'; §5 Conclusions ('up to 88% in home systems and 78% in micro-grid systems'); §4.2.1 (Li-ion lower except FEP/MEP/HTP/TETP)"
- claim: "Hybridisation of PV and wind: at the household level, hybrid solar-PV-wind systems with storage have 17–40% lower impacts than the equivalent stand-alone installations per kWh generated (up to 40% lower). The mechanism is size reduction — hybrid designs need 70% less battery capacity than the equivalent stand-alone systems (because solar and wind output peak at different times of day), plus a ~half-size wind turbine and smaller PV. In hybrid designs the lead-acid and Li-ion batteries have 56% and 69% lower impacts per kWh respectively than in the equivalent stand-alone systems. In the hybrid household mix, wind provides 77% of the load and PV the remaining 23%."
source_location: "Abstract (17–40%); §4.2.1.2 ('up to 40% lower … 70% less capacity … 56% and 69% lower'); §4.1.1 (wind 77% / PV 23%)"
- claim: "Adding battery storage to a diesel generator allows more efficient operation by decoupling load from generation: the generator then operates only half of the year and consumes 30% less fuel. In environmental terms, Li-ion batteries reduce the diesel-genset impacts by ~30% on average and lead-acid batteries by ~20% per kWh. In the community hybrids, wind provides on average 64% of the load and integrating renewables reduces fuel consumption by 62–85% relative to the diesel-generator-with-battery baseline; batteries allow renewable fractions of up to 100%, and even a fully-renewable micro-grid (no diesel backup) is feasible for a tropical island."
source_location: "§4.2.2.1 (generator half-year, 30% less fuel; Li-ion −30% / lead-acid −20%); §4.2.2.2 (wind 64% avg; fuel −62–85%); §5 Conclusions (renewable fractions up to 100%; genset operating hours −50%, fuel −30%)"
- claim: "Among the 15 community micro-grid options, the hybrid PV-wind-lead-acid-battery system (C-PV+WT+LA) has the lowest impacts in 10 of the 18 categories (GWP, ODP, PMFP, POFP, MEP, TAP, FDP, ALOP, NLTP and IRP) and is judged the environmentally most sustainable single micro-grid design. The worst options are the household wind-turbine-with-lead-acid-battery (H-WT+LA), highest in 14 household impacts / 6 overall, and the community diesel generator (C-DG), highest in 8 categories. No single energy source dominates across all 18 categories."
source_location: "§4.2.2.2 (C-PV+WT+LA lowest in 10 categories); §5 Conclusions (worst = H-WT+LA and C-DG, 6 and 8 categories)"
- claim: "Effect of installation scale. Solar PV is modular, so per-kWh impacts are practically constant across scales, but scaling PV up to a community micro-grid raises most impacts on average by 15% (distribution network + ground-mounting vs roof-mounting) and land occupation by 26–44 times. Wind follows an 'economies of scale' principle: community 100-kW wind turbines have 21–92% lower impacts per kWh than household 5-kW turbines (low-alloyed vs stainless steel for the tower; higher capacity factor 19.3% vs 15.7%). PV capacity factor is 17.9% at both scales. The distribution network (micro-grid only) contributes 16–22% of ALOP, 15–30% of FEP, 15–29% of HTP, 13–21% of MEP, 6–25% of MDP and 9–31% of TETP, mostly from copper; utility-pole wood is the main ALOP source. Hence PV is environmentally better installed individually in households while wind is better as community-scale turbines in a micro-grid."
source_location: "§4.2.3 + §5 Conclusions (PV +15%, land 26–44×; wind 21–92% lower; CF 17.9%/15.7%/19.3%); §4.2.3 (distribution-network contribution ranges)"NI relevance
context: both — this resolves RT_032 (D01) and feeds D01 (renewable energy & storage / off-grid system design) and I09 (environmental sustainability). It is an international (Philippines tropical-island) environmental-LCA study, so its calibration value is qualitative design guidance and relative comparisons, not absolute NZ numbers.
- Hybrid PV+wind is a storage-reduction lever, not just a reliability lever (D01/D19). The study quantifies why NI should prefer a complementary PV+wind mix over single-source generation: because solar and wind output peak at different times of day, a hybrid needs ~70% less battery capacity than the equivalent stand-alone systems for the same service, and this cuts per-kWh environmental impact by up to 40%. This is the environmental corroboration of the diurnal-complementarity logic already in the corpus (Totarabank retains PV “given complementary diurnal/seasonal cycles”, LIT_032; the 3-slice diurnal balance, CR_020) — hybridisation shrinks the single most expensive and most impactful component (storage).
- Batteries are the environmental hotspot — a right-sizing argument for I09 and the LPSP design lever. Energy storage causes up to 88% of a home system’s mineral-resource depletion (78% for micro-grids) and is a large share of most other categories. NI models storage heavily; this is direct I09 evidence that over-sizing batteries carries a real per-kWh environmental cost, reinforcing the “design to an accepted unmet-energy fraction (LPSP ~1–5%) rather than 100% reliability” lever in CR_030 and the pooling/shared-storage efficiency case in LIT_006.
- Household-PV + community-wind is the environmentally optimal architecture (D01 scale logic). PV is modular (constant per-kWh impact across scale) and is environmentally better installed per-household on roofs (ground-mounting + distribution add ~15% and 26–44× land use at community scale), whereas wind benefits from economies of scale (community 100-kW turbines 21–92% lower impact than 5-kW household turbines). This gives NI a defensible default: distribute PV to dwellings, centralise wind at community scale — the environmental parallel to the community-microgrid pooling and sizing rules in LIT_059.
- A battery on a diesel backstop cuts its fuel ~30% and impacts 20–30% (D20 backstop layer). Even where a diesel genset remains the backstop, decoupling load from generation with storage lets it run half the year on 30% less fuel — a cheap operational lever that supports the “diesel genset + oversized battery + demand flexibility” NZ stack in CR_030 / CR_031. The study also confirms fully-renewable (100% RE fraction) micro-grids are feasible without a diesel backup for a good-resource site.
- Environmental-displacement evidence (I09). The community micro-grid comparison shows renewable integration reduces genset fuel by 62–85% and that the hybrid PV-wind-battery micro-grid is the environmentally most sustainable option in most categories — an LCA-grounded complement to the NZ emissions-displacement evidence for remote communities (Chatham Islands 1,300 t CO₂/yr, CR_012; Rakiura −44% CO₂, LIT_068). It also carries the nuance (echoing Smith et al. 2015) that maximising the renewable fraction does not automatically minimise environmental impact — the tower-steel and battery-material burdens matter.
Scope caveat (load-bearing): the absolute impact figures (e.g. GWP 105–470 g CO₂ eq./kWh) are for a Philippines tropical-island prototype (solar 5.27 kWh/m²/day, wind 5.66 m/s at 50 m) using Chinese-manufactured, sea-freighted components on a coal-heavy supply chain — materially different from NZ solar/wind resource and NZ’s ~86% renewable grid. Do not port the g CO₂/kWh values into an NZ I09 cell; transfer the relative rankings and design principles only. Figures are HOMER/GaBi simulation outputs, not measured.
Research targets
RT_032 is RESOLVED by this page — Aberilla et al. (2020) is now held and read verbatim.
Documents to retrieve
- None. The paper’s own upstream LCA references (Smith et al. 2015 Thai island [24], Bilich et al. 2017 Kenya PV micro-grid [25], Üçtuğ & Azapagic 2018 PV-Li-ion [59]) are all further non-NZ off-grid LCAs; NI’s off-grid energy evidence base is already well populated (LIT_031/032/033/059/068, CR_012/030/031), so none is worth a retrieval target.
Research gaps
- None new. The transferability gap this source exposes — an NZ-specific per-kWh LCA of off-grid PV/wind/battery — is a low-priority enrichment already partly covered by the NZ emissions-displacement figures in CR_012 and LIT_068; not opened as an RT to keep the backlog lean.
Resolved
- RT_032 (RESOLVED → this page): Aberilla et al. (2020) “Design and environmental sustainability assessment of small-scale off-grid energy systems for remote rural communities” (Applied Energy 258:114004) — the D01 doc target flagged by CR_005, now retrieved and read verbatim.
Notes
Primary peer-reviewed, open-access article (Applied Energy 258 (2020) 114004, doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.114004, CC BY 4.0; University of Manchester + University of the Philippines). Read verbatim via pdftotext — every figure in key_claims traces to a stated section/table → data_quality: verified. The numbers are LCA + HOMER simulation outputs (ReCiPe 1.08 midpoints; GaBi ts 7.3; Ecoinvent 3.1 background), not field measurements — the same status as the sibling HOMER studies LIT_032 / LIT_033 / LIT_068.
context: both — the design principles (hybridisation storage-reduction, battery hotspot, household-PV/community-wind architecture, diesel+battery efficiency) feed NI’s D01 energy design and I09 environmental evidence, and the same option-space comparison is directly citable in the thesis strategic-technology-options / off-grid-design argument.
⚠ Abstract-vs-body precision on the “88%” figure: the abstract says batteries cause “up to 88% of the life cycle impacts of a home energy system”; the body (§4.2.1.1) and conclusion make clear the 88% is specifically the mineral-depletion potential (MDP) of the H-PV+LA system (78% for micro-grids), not 88% of all impacts. The claim above states it precisely as MDP.
⚠ Not NZ-transferable in absolute terms (see the Scope caveat in NI relevance): tropical-island resource + Chinese sea-freighted components. Use relative comparisons/design directions, not the g CO₂/kWh values, in any NZ calculation.
Connections
Links to
Referenced by
SSI indicators (1): I09: Environmental Sustainability
EDT domains (1): D01: Renewable Energy & Storage Systems