Abstract
A large proportion of the world’s populations live in developing countries. Rural areas in many of these countries are isolated geographically from grid connections and they have a very low rate of electrification. The uninterrupted power supply (UPS) in these regions is a considerable challenge. The use of renewable energy resources (RER) in an off-grid hybrid energy system can be a pathway to solving this problem. Tanzania has a very low electrification rate (rural 16.9%, urban 65.3%). This paper discussed, described, designed a novel uninterruptible, and environmental friendly solar-wind hybrid energy system (HES) for remote area of Tanzania having closed loop cooled-solar system (CLC-SS). An optimized configuration for the proposed HES was obtained by Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) analysis software using local solar and wind resources. The designed CLC-SS improved the efficiency of the hybrid solar-wind systems by extracting more power from the solar modules. An evaluation of CLC-SS revealed a 10.23% increase in power output from conventional solar PV modules. The results validate that the optimized system’s energy cost (COE) is 0.26 $/kWh and the net present cost (NPC) of the system is $7110.53. The enhanced output solar wind hybrid system, designed in this paper is cost-effective and can be applied easily to other regions of the world with similar climate conditions.
Highlights
In the modern era, there is an increasing need to utilize renewable energy resources (RES) due to the depletion of conventional energy resources (CER)
In accordance with literature review and previous studies, we developed and compared the following cooling technologies to accomplish the most effective cooling topology for PV systems
The amount of solar radiation varies during different months of the year; with January, February, March, September, and October having a higher level of solar radiation than the average annual daily radiation: 6.17 kW/m2 /day, 6.59 kW/m2 /day, 6.07 kW/m2 /day, 6.07 kW/m2 /day and 6.12 kW/m2 /day, respectively; and May, June, and July having comparatively less radiation (4.68 kW/m2 /day, 4.56 kW/m2 /day and 4.84 kW/m2 /day, respectively)
Summary
There is an increasing need to utilize renewable energy resources (RES) due to the depletion of conventional energy resources (CER). Like most developing countries the main barrier to economic progress in Tanzania is low electrification. The number of houses in rural areas connected to the national grid has increased significantly over the last half-decade. In [3], approximately 16.9% of rural households in Tanzania mainland were connected to different forms of electricity, which is much lower than the 65.3% of their equivalents in urban areas. The statistical data shows that the highest proportion of households connected to the grid was Dar es Salaam (75.2%) followed in order by Njombe region (50.5%), Kilimanjaro (42.6%), and Katavi (40.0%).
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