Abstract: Micro­grids are a rapid­ly evolv­ing and increas­ing­ly com­mon form of local pow­er generation

used to serve the needs of both rur­al and urban com­mu­ni­ties. In this paper, we present a methodology

to eval­u­ate the evo­lu­tion of the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of stand-alone micro­grids projects. The proposed

method­ol­o­gy con­sid­ers a com­pos­ite sus­tain­abil­i­ty index (CSI) that includes both pos­i­tive and negative

impacts of the oper­a­tion of the micro­grid in a giv­en com­mu­ni­ty. The CSI is con­struct­ed along

envi­ron­men­tal, social, eco­nom­ic and tech­ni­cal dimen­sions of the micro­grid. The sub-index­es of

each dimen­sion are aggre­gat­ed into the CSI via a set of adap­tive weight­ing fac­tors, which indicate

the rel­a­tive impor­tance of the cor­re­spond­ing dimen­sion in the sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals. The proposed

method­ol­o­gy aims to be a sup­port instru­ment for pol­i­cy mak­ers espe­cial­ly when defin­ing sound

cor­rec­tive mea­sures to guar­an­tee the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of small, iso­lat­ed micro­grid projects. To validate

the per­for­mance of the pro­posed method­ol­o­gy, a micro­grid installed in the north­ern part of Chile

(Huat­a­con­do) has been used as a bench­mark­ing project.