Abstract:
Electrification to rural areas, those with no electric access or detached from national grid, is
one of the most challenging issues in developing countries like Ethiopia. Due to the recent
concerns about the global climatic change and diminishing fuel prices, searching for reliable,
environmental friendly and renewable energy sources to satisfy the rising electrical energy
demand has become vital.
The main objective of this study was to obtain an optimal suited configuration of hybrid
electricity generation system using various renewables/alternative energy sources to meet the
village load requirement reliably, economically, continuously and sustainably. The solar
potential and wind speed were taken from NASA, the cost of associated hybrid components are
collected from different sources and the electric load data was estimated for community and
public service’s needs. Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) was used
to perform techno-economic analysis to meet the load requirement using solar PV-wind turbinediesel generator-battery hybrid off-grid configuration. Based on the resources, load, hybrid
system and the component cost input data considered and running the simulation HOMER gives
optimization, sensitivity and grid comparison results.
The optimization result of the simulation demonstrates that the hybrid configuration (solar PVwind turbine-diesel generator-battery) that achieves total NPC of $1,506,689 and COE of
0.360$/kWh at a renewable fraction of 0.6 as the best optimal hybrid configuration considering
economic and environmental point of view. From environmental stand point of view, the system
is characterized with a minimum percentage of carbon dioxide and other GHG emission of about
195,974 kg/year.
The sensitivity analysis examines the consistency of the optimal system under different sensitivity
inputs such as load, wind speed, diesel price and PVcapital cost multiplier and it reveals that the
multiple hybrid systems (PV-wind-generator-battery) system is more favorable. The grid
comparison reveals that hybrid off-grid power generating systems is feasible for electrification
of rural community beyond the 3.66 km breakeven grid extension distance.
The selected hybrid configuration system is an excellent solution to guarantee a reliable and
affordable electric power supply without interruption of the load for the village of Deleta when
compared with grid extension under certain conditions of the high capital cost of grid-extension,
sparsely populated and low energy demand of the rural community.
