Techno-Economic and Environmental Analysis of an Off-grid Hybrid Renewable Energy System for Rural Electrification

Abstract

Rural electrification is key to socio-economic development in developing countries like Nigeria. However, extending the national grid to remote rural areas is expensive and time consuming, and the traditional power supply method also involves utilization of a standalone renewable energy source such as Solar which have their associated drawbacks due to their unreliability in nature. Hence, this research carried out a techno-economic and environmental analysis of an off-grid hybrid renewable energy system for rural electrification using Kepler Optimization Algorithm (KOA). Feasibility study on electricity and hourly load demand assessment of Alayin village was conducted and village load profile was estimated. Mathematical modeling of each hybrid RES was formulated. A KOA technique was employed to carry out optimal sizing and check the cost efficiency of BG/ PHES/ Battery, PV/PHES/Battery, and the hybrid RES (PV/BG/PHES/Battery). Simulation of the model was done using MATLAB R2021a. The value obtained was validated with Gravitational Search Algorithm (GSA) for performance evaluation using Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE), Loss of Power Supply Probability (LPSP) and CO2 reduction in manure management as performance metrics. The results of the analysis showed an appreciable reduction on the LCOE and CO2 with high reliability using KOA-hybrid RES compared with GSA-hybrid RES.