The goal of this paper is to analyze the impacts of the level of decentralization in energy investment decisions on the technical, economic, and environmental performance. The analysis is important because of the increasing popularity of decentralized renewable energy technologies such as solar cells, fuel cells, wind power, etc. In this paper, we show that depending on the level of decentralization at which the decisions are made, the overall system performance is different. We consider an investment decision that can be made at varying levels of decentralization. The HOMER software is used for analyzing scenarios at different levels. The goal of this paper is not to present a new approach for design but to illustrate the problem itself. Using this problem, we highlight the need to establish new methodologies and tools to make such decisions related to the energy infrastructure.
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