Reinforcement of smart campus grid infrastructure for sustainable energy management in buildings across horizon 2030

• DOI: 10.1016/j.rineng.2025.104300
• Publication Date: 2025-02-11T22:56:38Z
• Authors: Mahnoor Abbasi; Syed Ali Abbas Kazmi; Muhammad Zubair I...; Mustafa Anwar; Muhammad Hassan; Thamer A.H. Alghamdi; Mohammed Alenezi
• Keywords: Technology; Distribution management; Electric Grid design; T; RE; Cost optimization; Distributed generation; Smart Grid

Electricity consumption expenses take a significant amount of an educational institution's budget. A major part of utility production in Pakistan depends on non-renewable sources of energy, which have a bad impact on the environment, while their production cost is very high. To mitigate these problems at an institutional level, Renewable Energy (RE) should be promoted; this research provides a detailed plan for improving the NUST grid structure for sustainable energy management by 2030. The study improves the location of RE sources, especially solar PV systems, and includes a central Diesel generator (DG) to replace dispersed generators. The research provides a new strategy for the development of the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) grid infrastructure to support sustainable energy management by 2030. It combines central utility-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) systems and distributed generation (DG) systems, unlike the current literature that largely consists of distributed renewable power systems. This research evaluates grid performance by creating a 75-bus distribution network model in MATLAB/Simulink and implementing variations to various scenarios to optimize operational costs at 38.24 % and decrease CO2 emissions by 46.05 %. This, together with the use of the HOMER software for both cost and environmental analysis, avails a good model that other institutions experiencing similar characteristics in the power sector can emulate when in pursuit of the optimal, efficient integration of sustainable energy solutions.