Optimal Sizing and Assessment of an Islanded Photovoltaic‐Battery‐Diesel Generator Microgrid Applicable to a Remote School of Bangladesh

Abstract

Electricity has become a part and parcel of modern life. The world is constantly developing, and the electricity demand is inevitably increasing with it. It is a big challenge for the power generation organizations to cope up with this increasing demand. For a developing country like Bangladesh, this challenge is even bigger. Bangladesh has many remote areas which are deprived of grid connectivity. In this article, system design and performance evaluation are conducted on a solar battery‐based hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) with diesel backup for a school in a remote area located in the northern part of the country, where conventional power grid connectivity is not available. From field survey, a load demand of 10.468 kWh/day for a normal working day and a peak demand of 3.3 kW are considered in this work for the proposed site. For simulation purpose hybrid optimization model for electric renewable, very well‐known software is used. The solar radiation data required for the work are collected from NASA Surface meteorology and Solar Energy database. Analyzing the load requirements and metrological data a solar‐battery diesel generator‐based HRES is proposed for the school. From the analysis and simulation, the Net Present Cost (NPC) for the proposed system is found USD 6191 with a Cost of Energy (COE) of $0.125/kWh. Further, a comparative study is done and the proposed system can reduce the COE and Green House Gas (GHG) emission of about 29.85% and 69% respectively than the conventional power plants. Finally, a techno‐economic analysis is conducted with sensitivity analysis, time series analysis, and multiyear analysis to prove the rigidity of the proposed system.

Techno‐economic optimization of a grid‐connected hybrid energy system considering electric and thermal load prediction

“…However, thermal load demand and multi-year analysis based on the load growth rate were neglected in their study. Another investigation 16 proposed a similar configuration to Ref. 14 for a remote place in Bangladesh.…”

“…Reviewing recent studies in the field, it can be observed that many studies neglected to consider load growth rates in their long-term planning. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16] In these studies, hybrid energy systems are optimized using a one-year electrical (sometimes thermal) load consumption profile and then extrapolate that particular year to other years until the end of the optimization (static planning approach). While this procedure significantly saves simulation time, the results could be unrealistic, especially when the residential sector is taken as a case study.…”

Techno-Economic and Power System Optimization of a Renewable Rich Islanded Microgrid Considering Different Dispatch Strategies

“…To introduce these distributed renewable resources into the power system network, microgrids (MG) are an feasible and highly effective solution [1]- [3], particularly since the extension of the conventional power grid often becomes more costly than setting up a MG for a remote offgrid location [4]. The effectiveness of MGs, have been attracted several researchers to the topic [5]- [7], [9], [10], [14] in recently. MGs mainly contain distributed renewable generation sources like wind turbines, fuel cells and photo voltaic (PV) cells that integrate different sources and loads like light emitting diodes (LED) in the system.…”

“…MGs mainly contain distributed renewable generation sources like wind turbines, fuel cells and photo voltaic (PV) cells that integrate different sources and loads like light emitting diodes (LED) in the system. Hybrid alternating current (AC)/ direct current (DC) MGs contain both DC and AC buses which can integrate both DC and AC sources and loads in the network [10]. To introduce these sources with conventional power sources, an appropriate energy management system (EMS) is needed [11].…”

“…Solar and wind energy oriented standalone hybrid MGs can provide a better solution for the decentralized and remote distribution of electrical power. However, such operation is challenging due to the intermittent nature of the solar and wind energy resources [10] which can cause some uncertainty issues in a standalone MG. Because of the significant deviation in both power consumption and generation, the reliability of the power system has always been a vital issue for a standalone renewable MG [13]. Moreover, frequency and voltage fluctuation can occur because of the rapid and sudden changes of the power consumption in the distribution system that directs to system instability [14].…”