Development of optimal energy management in Galapagos Islands towards Smart Grid

The Galapagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands located in the Pacific Ocean, 926 km west of continental Ecuador, of which they are a part. Since 1978, Galapagos Islands are accepted as Heritage World. Due to the growth of the population, there are several social, economic and environmental problems, which endanger the environment conservation of the Islands. In this context, the Ecuadorian government desires to preserve its ecological heritage. Hence, with the participation of several stakeholders, mainly the Ministry of Energy and Renewable Energy, it is releasing a lot of initiatives. In order to improve the general services that are provided in the islands, this goal will be achieved by means of reducing fossil fuel consumption and therefore CO₂ emissions. Thus, this thesis has analyzed the impact of new services on the grid such as the mandatory replacement of conventional vehicles and cookers for efficient ones and to propose solutions for reducing negative issues originated on the network. Also, a strong integration of distributed generation is considered in the analysis. In addition, innovative solutions for both low and medium voltage have been designed and tested for improving the electrical service without affecting the environment and conserving this world heritage. For instance, a smart DSM program composed of Time Of Use scheme combined with Demand Response has shown interesting results, the installation of a Battery Energy Storage System has been studied as well; the results in Medium Voltage are promising. An Automatic Phase Switching system is adapted like a solution for reducing unbalance in low voltage with impressive results. The deployment of reclosers has demonstrated a considerable improvement in the reliability with a very short Return On Investment. Considering the Information and Communication Technologies, a key piece to deploy Smart Grids, the communication architecture of the Neighbor, Field and Home Area Networks is addressed. An important contribution is a methodology proposed to perform analysis on a large scale considering that all the clients connect to Santa Cruz distribution network. The percentage of integration of each new service is determined through sociological studies. As last, an Energy Management System for performing optimal energy management within Galapagos is designed. All these studies have a significant challenge: the optimal management of electricity of isolated grid with zero fossil energy. (author)