Comparative study of economic viability of rural electrification using renewable energy resources versus diesel generator option in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to assess the economic viability of Saudi Arabia's renewable energy resources in electricity production in the rural and remote areas as against the use of diesel generators (DG). The methodology employed is to pick an existing isolated DG electric station for a rural community and assess the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) generated for incremental generation by adding either DG, wind electric conversion system(WECS), or solar Photo Voltaic (PV) electric system. Cost figures are derived from current technology price indices and consultancies studies as contained in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory cost report of November 2012. The existing power station of Addfa in the Southern region is analyzed based on the requirement to increase its current capacity to cater for surrounding smaller communities. An annual extra energy requirement of 4 GWh is to be met by scenarios of using DG, WECS, PV or a hybrid system. Two ownership structures are considered namely a public utility that pays no tax and a private independent power producer (IPP) that pays tax. Both the constant and current LCOE generated are determined for each ownership structure. The results indicate that the WECS is the first investment choice with a constant LCOE of $0.0922/kWh and $0.1090/kWh for the public utility and the IPP, respectively. The DG is the second choice with LCOE of $0.1082/kWh and $0.1175/kWh, the third is a hybrid DG plus WECS with LCOE of $0.1102/kWh and $0.1234/kWh for each ownership structure, respectively. Finally, the PV electric system ranks fourth with LCOE of $0.2791/kWh and $0.3279/kWh, respectively. The results of sensitivity analysis show that these values of LCOE are more sensitive to the initial capital cost and less sensitive to the operation and management costs.

Urban energy system management for enhanced energy potential for upcoming smart cities

“…All costs are in units of U.S. dollars due to predefined currency units in the model and it is restricted to be edited in the model as input (Gifford and Grace, 2011). The monetary considerations for deployment of the HUES can be quite diverse in developed regions than the undeveloped regions (Bawah et al, 2013). In new regions, the situation is more likely that the economic return will be very much trivial with tiny or no cash flow.…”

A Novel Demand Response Strategy for Sizing of Hybrid Energy System With Smart Grid Concepts

“…This factor is defined as the ratio between the LOLE and the total number of hours of complete one year (8760 hrs). The relation showing the value of the LOLP and its relation with the LOLE is shown in (14) [56], [57].…”

“…Another cost study called annualized cost system (ACS) has been used in [13]. One of the best cost analysis for the HES is the CoE strategy in which the ratio of the total annualized cost of the system to the yearly electricity delivered to the load [14], [15]. A detailed description of these cost estimation strategies is introduced in [16].…”

Overview of the hybrid solar system

“…Therefore, increasing utilizing hybrid systems like solar and wind systems that considered as promising energy resources that use for residential and industrial applications. Although lowering usable in the rural areas due to the reduction of technical capacity such as break-even distance and low population size [13]. In another hand, hybrid solar/wind systems are a little complicated regarding to their components (non-linear properties) and other variables parameters among both of configurations to reach optimization technique for hybrid solar/wind system with the assistance of computer software which plays an important role to design safe energy systems [14].…”