DESIGN OF OFF-GRID HYBRID ENERGY SYSTEM FOR REMOTE AREA IN ETHIOPIA

Abstract

Development and utilization of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and small hydro have been the most best option to fulfill the alarming increasing demand all over the world and these are important for developing countries like Ethiopia to full fill their power demand in environmental friend and sustainable manner. The main application area of off-grid hybrid system is in remote areas where extension of grid power transmission is un economical because of geographical and technical problems. Ethiopian Government has planned to achieve universal electricity access by 2025 and off-grid electrification program is planned electrify remote area households which accounts 35%. This paper assesses the potential of Solar and wind energy sources of the country and discuses design, simulation and optimization of off-grid hybrid energy system for remote area by selecting small village in the regional state of Tigray Northern Ethiopia. Simulation, optimum and sensitivity result have been calculated in HOMER software using data collected from NASA websites and using data collected and analyzed from literature review and website. An optimum hybrid system is selected from the categorized optimization result which fulfil the demand of the proposed village. Selection of hybrid configuration is made based on NPC, LCOE, RF, capacity shortage, excess electricity, fuel consumption and emission released. A hybrid system which contains solar, wind and diesel generator with batteries is the first feasible hybrid system with levelized cost of Energy (LCOE) 0.259$/kwh and RF of 90%. Sensitivity analysis have been carried out in order to determine the effect of variation and three sensitivity variables have been carried out using sensitivity case like scaled annual wind speed variation, diesel price change and variation of interest rate a total of 12 sensitivity result with LCOE varies from 0.14$/kwh up to 0.259$/kwh are summarized in tabular form.