Optimal Sizing and Techno-economic Analysis of an Off-grid Solar Photovoltaic System for Rural Electrification

Abstract

The economics of generating electricity is becoming a great challenge to the developing countries, thereby making electricity difficult to be assessed in rural areas that are completely off-grid. For this reason, there is a need to extend electricity to these rural areas by exploring the available renewable energy source in Nigeria. This work was carried out using a remote community in Nigeria as a case study. The electrical load survey of the community was carried out to determine the load demand of the area. The value of S4.6 kWh was obtained as the daily load demand considering the future expansion that will be included in the nearest future, hence the load curve was determined. This work also considered the modelling and optimization of the system components prior to the economic analysis of the project. The BAT algorithm was used as an optimization tool to determine the number of PV modules, battery banks and the capacity of the inverter to be used. At different scenarios, the number of the components varied with the days of autonomy of the energy storage system and PV power rating. The Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) was determined to be 0.5034 ${\$}$/kWh. Finally, the results were validated against the HOMER software.