Design and Characterization of PV Minigrid Plants for Modern Farming and Rural Electrification in Rwanda

Solar energy is among the clean, ecofriendly, and reliable energies. Standalone PV plants have great potential to fulfill specific load demands in remote villages in Rwanda. However, owing to the scarcity of information on solar energy potentials in some areas, lack of accurate load demands, and overlooking energy consumption by farming activities, PV plants can be hardly optimally sized, developed, or utilized. This study proposes and characterizes the PV plant model based on precisely quantified load demands including the energy needed for e-farming. The technoeconomic performance of these PV plants was analyzed using PVSyst software. The results confirm availability of solar resources enough to steadily satisfy the loads in the communities. Nevertheless, several factors were seen to induce energy losses for the developed PV systems, among which the heating owing to the rise of temperature being the major factor of energy loss. In fact, the solar radiation intensity exceeds 1800 kW/m²/year, and the heating occurring at the surface of the panels causes energy losses of up to 9.46%. Also, the findings suggested that the investors will gain the financial benefits for 10 out of 25 years while the energy’s price would drop from 0.252 EUR/kWh to 0.180 EUR/kWh. These findings are significant as they provide information that planners and investors could use to make informed decisions. Future studies may need to use such results to quantify the contribution of available subsidies and incentive reduction on cost of solar energy and adoption of PV plants.