Present situation and future prospects of electricity generation in Aegean Archipelago islands

The Aegean Archipelago is a remote Hellenic area, including several hundreds of scattered islands of various sizes. In these islands more than 6010,000 people are living mainly in small remote communities. The main economical activities of the islanders are apart from tourism, seafaring, fishery, agriculture and stock farming. One of the major problems of the area is the insufficient infrastructure, strongly related with the absence of an integrated and cost-effective electrification plan. In this context, the present work is concentrated on analyzing the present situation and demonstrating the future prospects of electricity generation in the Aegean Archipelago islands. For this purpose, one should first investigate the time evolution of the corresponding electricity generation parameters (i.e. annual electricity consumption, peak power demand, capacity factor, specific fuel consumption) for the last 30 years. Subsequently, the corresponding diesel and heavy-oil consumption along with the electricity production cost for every specific autonomous power station of the area are investigated. Special attention is paid in order to estimate the contribution of renewable energy sources (RES) in the energy balance of each island. Finally, an attempt is made to describe in brief the most realistic electricity production solutions available, including the operation of hybrid RES-based power plants in collaboration with appropriate energy storage facilities. Additionally, the idea of connecting the islands of the area with the mainland and interconnecting them is also taken into consideration. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.