Techno-economic optimization of a stand-alone hybrid microgrid for the rural electrification in Sub Saharan Africa

Abstract

Paper presented to the 3rd Southern African Solar Energy Conference, South Africa, 11-13 May, 2015.

This paper is focused on the design of a stand-alone micro-grid for rural electrification. The aim of this work is to define the best mix of energy sources and the optimal size of the energy storage for a small isolated village on the Ghana seaside. We obtain the optimal solution by simulating one year of operation for several different combinations of prime movers and battery sizes and comparing the economic performance in terms of levelized cost of electricity. We adopt a rolling-horizon strategy to simulate the micro-grid operation, which optimizes generators and loads schedule over a 12 hours time horizon. We solve a Mixed Integer Linear Programming problem for each time step, exploiting weather forecast for predicting the energy available from sun and wind and taking into account a realistic operation of each component like energy losses and costs during start-up of dispatchable generators and ageing cost for the battery. The optimal configuration found includes a 30 kWel wind turbine, a 60 kWel photovoltaic array, a 30 kWel biomass fired ORC and a 50 kWel diesel. The limited use of the diesel engine in the optimal solution demonstrates that energy access in a sustainable and economic way is possible even in rural contexts. Finally, two sensitivity analyses are presented varying the cost of the biomass and the error of wind speed forecast.