Software

ELVIRA: Electrification of rural villages

ELVIRA is not longer developped. A new product for low-voltage electrification studies is now available instead: LAP

ELVIRA is a software for technical and economical evaluation of rural electrification projects. Taking into account the cost of investments at the year of electrification, maintenance and operations costs, and on the other hand the generated revenues from the services sold, ELVIRA presents an optimized economic balance of the project. Results obtained for several villages can be aggregated to obtain an overall balance at regional level.

The data

Services

The objective of village electrification is to provide services. A service is characterized by the installation of the necessary in-house electrification equipment, and by its electric power consumption pattern. A library of services allows the user to define a set of typical services. For each service is defined the in-house equipment to be installed (cables, connection- and distribution boards, lamps, plugs, switches), as well as the power consumption profile for this type of service: maximum power demand, daily load curve, etc.

Power sources

Four types of power sources are considered:

1. MV/LV substations
   These are typical distribution transformers feeding a LV network. The transformers are fed by a MV line connected to a HV station, or by an antenna on a MV line passing nearby the village.
2. Diesel plants
   These are Diesel power plants feeding a LV network. A Diesel plant is composed of a motor/generator set, buildings, LV and auxiliary equipment, and a fuel tank offering autonomy for a specified duration.
3. Hydro micro-stations
   The hydro micro-stations are quite similar to the Diesel plants. The main difference with Diesel plants is the use of a Hydro turbine instead of a motor, and the absence of a fuel tank.
4. Solar Home Systems (SHS)
   A Solar Home System is composed of a photovoltaic module, batteries offering the required autonomy, an energy manager (battery charger), and possibly a power inverter if AC power is required. Such SHS are generally used to provide power to those services (houses) that are too far away from the LV distribution network.

Several power stations of different type can be created in a village, each one feeding its own LV network.

The LV network

Each service is supplied either by a SHS (one SHS for each service) or by a distribution network that is fed by a MV/LV substation, a Diesel plant or a hydro micro-station. The network is composed of LV lines and poles with their accessories and possibly with streetlights. The whole village can be electrified by one or several power sources of various types.

Equipment and service catalogs

The equipments available for services, sources and the distribution networks are defined in catalogs. These catalogs contain all technical and economical data (acquisition cost, installation costs, operations and maintenance costs, life time, ...) that allow to:

• determine the technical and economical optimal solution for the electrification of the village,
• prepare the economic balance of installation- and operating costs, on one hand, and the generated revenues on the other hand

Man Machine Interface (MMI)

The user communicates with the software through 3 interface types:

• Equipment catalogs
  Technical and economical characteristics of equipments and services are introduced using typical data forms and are organized in a classic Windows tree view offering a very user friendly and intuitive MMI.
• Geographical Information System (GIS)
  For all graphical aspects, ELVIRA uses a powerful GIS MMI based on the MapObjects toolbox of ESRI. This MMI allows to import maps and schemas of regions and villages. Geodata in shape format can be directly visualized. Other formats can be imported on demand. For raster data, several typical formats such as BMP, TIFF, JPEG, etc. are allowed. Then, using these maps as a background, the user indicates the location and type of services to be supplied, location and type of substations and Diesel plants, the right-of-ways of the LV distribution network, as well as the location and type of services to be supplied by SHS systems.
• Reports
  Two types of reports are available:
  1. reports with pre-defined format and contents. Those reports can be previewed and printed.
  2. reports directly exported in Microsoft Excel tables. Using Excel, the user can easily modify the spreadsheet - if necessary - before printing it or before exporting it to any other document, such as a Microsoft Word for instance.

The user may define the contents of these reports using various options presented in a user-friendly interface.

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