OPTIMIZED COMMUNITY BASED HYBRID ENERGY SYSTEM

Abstract

Energy is the basic human need and critical input to the socio-economic development of the country. Supply of reliable and quality power at reasonable rate is essential for overall development of a nation. Hybrid renewable energy systems offer the only hope of meeting the energy requirements of the people, specially for communities of rural areas where the Renewable Energy (R.E) resources are less than the demand. Lot of work has been carried out for Hybrid Energy Systems (HES) for optimal utilization. In this study, a village Lohepar in Kushinagar district of Uttar Pradesh has been selected due to non availability of utility grid. The data related to the resources available, and demands of electricity use collected from the field were processed to get the total resources, load duration curve, peak load etc. Based on the potential available, the sizing of the various R.E. systems, computation of Cost of Energy (COE) from each resource, peak loads etc. have been carried out. Using the available resources, five different hybrid system models were formulated as - Biomass/PV/DG/Battery, Biomass/DG Set/battery, PV/DG/Battery, Biomass/PV/Battery and Biomass/DG set hybrid energy system. Five systems were optimized to get the minimum COE of the systems, out of which the Biomass/DG Set/battery hybrid energy system model was found most sutable on the basis of minimum COE (Rs. 6.72/kWh). The matching of loads with the available resources and the time schedule of operation of each component has also been given. Modeling of hybrid systems were developed using the software package HOMER (version 2.09) developed by National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). For electrification of remote areas in decentralized mode, hybrid energy systems will play a significant role in coming years.