The Contribution of Renewables on Reducing the Electricity Generation Cost in Autonomous Island Networks

The Aegean Archipelago is a remote Hellenic area, including several hundreds of scattered islands of various sizes. The electricity demand in the Aegean Archipelago islands has up to now been covered by the existing autonomous power stations (APS) at very high electricity production cost. In order to face the continuous load demand increase an integrated solution based on the exploitation of the available renewable energy sources potential in collaboration with appropriate energy storage systems is investigated. According to the results obtained, the proposed solution is clearly more cost-effective than the operation of the existing thermal power stations, while remarkable environmental and macroeconomic benefits are also expected.