Energy Crisis Way-Forward:Diesel Generator-Micro Hydro-Solar Hybrid Power System of Off-Grid Power Station for Rural Development

Abstract

There are several benefits for using renewable energy sources such as emission reduction, lowering of cost and technological gain. In many remote communities in the world, standalone power systems utilizing renewable sources of energy are widely deployed to counter the widespread of energy shortage conditions. The present days‟ quest for emission reduction from energy systems couple with the intention for rural electrification has fostered aggressive research directives for renewable energy for sustainable development. The major contributions to the existing body of knowledge in this study are to establish the large renewable energy sources usage and the optimal cost allocation of hybrid system components. For the off-grid electrification of the village under study, various combinations have been obtained for the hybrid systems with PV, micro-hydro turbines, batteries, convertors and generators from the HOMER optimization simulation. The optimal simulation result table shows that the most cost effective system configuration, i.e. the system with the least net present cost, is the PV micro hydro battery converter system configuration and the cost of energy (COE) at that scenario observed to be 0.044$/kWh, and renewable resources segment is around 99%. This shows that practically the total ratio of energy production is from renewable energy sources. Hence it has become a way forward for solving rural and off-grid communities‟ energy needs.