Biomass-based clean energy generation for South African farms and rural community

Abstract

This paper presents a technical and economic feasibility study for designing cost-effective and sustainable biomass-based energy generation system for a South African farm and neighbouring community in the Free State province. Biomass data collected from the farm is used to assess the energy potential of the available biomass and to design the energy generation scheme for the farm. Different system configurations with or without energy storage were studied and compared with respect to their optimum system architecture, cost-effectiveness, energy security and emission levels using HOMER. Out of all cases, case study 3 option of standalone biomass-based generating system without energy storage system, was found to be the most economically and technically feasible system configuration.