A rural electrification expansion model

In Colombia, power companies with capacity greater than 100MW pay royalties over gross sales for rural electrification programs. These contributions are collected by regional development corporations (RDC) with a jurisdiction over the area where the generation projects are located. To that end, the RDC need to define a plan for rural electrification in the regions. A mixed integer linear programming model was developed to define rural electrification programs for Colombian regions. In this model several objectives are considered. Objectives such as economic efficiency, minimum municipal electricity coverage, municipal electricity development priorities and some others are included in the model. The ∈-constant multiobjective methodology is used to solve this problem in which the economic efficiency objectives is used as the objective function and the other objectives are stated as constraints. In this case trade-off curves between objectives can be developed to show how much of one objective has to be sacrificed to improve the other objective. These trade-off curves are the main decision tool for decision makers. The proposed model is used to define a rural electrification program for a Colombian region. The trade-off curves show that the number of households covered with electricity diminish when, beside the economic efficiency objective, other objectives are considered. Some conclusions and recommendations are presented.