Reliability as a Design Principle: A Systematic Review and Integrated Framework for Renewable-Based Microgrids

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews how reliability is central to renewable microgrid design, emphasizing temporal energy adequacy, and proposes an integrated framework for reliability-centered planning.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive synthesis of recent literature, highlighting the importance of temporal factors and proposing an integrated roadmap for microgrid reliability planning.

Findings

Reliability in microgrids is governed mainly by time-coupled energy adequacy.

Traditional reliability indices are inadequate for renewable microgrids.

Optimization increasingly incorporates reliability through multi-objective formulations.

Abstract

Reliable operation is a central motivation for deploying renewable-based microgrids. This paper presents a systematic rapid review that positions reliability as the central organizing principle for microgrid design. Specifically, this review systematically synthesizes recent literature to examine how planning assumptions, optimization formulations, operational flexibility mechanisms, and reliability assessment frameworks jointly shape reliability outcomes. The synthesis shows that reliability in renewable-based microgrids is governed primarily by chronological, time-coupled energy adequacy rather than installed capacity alone, with Dunkelflaute events emerging as a key determinant of adequacy failure. Reliability outcomes are shaped by the joint interaction of resource portfolios, storage operating policies, and state trajectories, network features, and protection feasibility under inverter-dominated operation. The review further demonstrates that reliability indices inherited from conventional power systems are poorly suited for renewable-based microgrids, as they compress performance into single dimensions and obscure temporal, spatial, and service-critical risk concentrations. Across optimization practice, reliability is increasingly embedded through multi-objective and constrained formulations; however, persistent gaps remain in representing correlated renewable scarcity, mission-profile-dependent component reliability, and interruption valuation (e.g., value of lost load and customer damage functions) in a consistent and decision-relevant manner. Overall, this review consolidates planning factors, optimization approaches, reliability evaluation methods, and metric suitability into an integrated roadmap for reliability-centered microgrid planning, and outlines future directions toward state-aware, service-oriented planning and assessment frameworks.