Analysis of effects on hybrid power system's costs and pollutant emissions due to replacement of petroleum diesel with natural gas, fuel oil and biodiesel

Today, the world is very much concerned about the global warming effects due to the increasing pollutant emissions from various sectors of manufacturing industries. They are majorly using coal based power plants for fulfilling their electricity need. The requirement is of switching some partial load on renewable system and finding alternative fuels that can help in reducing green house gases' emissions. This paper presents the comparative analysis of effects using fuel oil, biodiesel and natural gas in place of petroleum diesel in optimized hybrid system comprising Solar PV, wind, battery and diesel generator. Here, the effects on optimal system sizing, pollutant emissions and total Net Present Cost (NPC) have been analyzed. The optimized hybrid system has been modeled and simulated using Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables (HOMER) software developed by NREL, USA. The results show that biodiesel is most cost effective as compared to the other systems which use diesel, natural gas or fuel oil. It is also seen that biodiesel produces lowest CO2 emissions but the highest nitrogen oxides.