Abstract
Access to energy is among the key pillars to socioeconomic and improved life style. The East African Community (EAC) countries, also members of sub-Saharan Africa, are among countries with enough energy resources but still struggling with low electricity access, and the lower proportion of citizens with electricity access challenges such as expensive tariff, frequent blackouts, and unreliable service still persists. Diesel technology is among the easy and fast installation technologies for a location with an urgent need of electricity while solar is a clean technology with free fuel. Considering the diversity of electricity tariffs, cost of diesel fuel, and suitability to solar energy exploitation in EAC, this paper intends to provide a technoeconomic analysis for reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy system in the region. A daily load of 94.44 kWh recorded from averaging electricity bills of a luxury house in Kigali, Rwanda, is used as research object, and HOMER simulations are carried on considering the level of such daily load being supplied by either (a) diesel generator, (b) solar + diesel technology, (c) PV + battery storage, or (d) PV + battery storage + grid system in each member country of the EAC. The results show that (a) solar energy is a feasible and applicable technology for energy generation for the whole six EAC countries; (b) for South Sudan, if it is a standalone system, the diesel technology is less costly than solar technology; however, solar energy can still be recommended to be adopted as it has no gas emissions; (c) except South Sudan, PV + battery storage technology is found to be more affordable and cleaner than any technology including diesel; and (d) the option of connecting PV + battery storage to the grid is found more economical for locations where grid interaction is possible because their levelized electricity costs (LCOE) are lower than the real electricity tariffs currently in use within each of the six EAC countries. The solar energy system with battery storage (both off-grid and grid connected) proposed in this research can lead to an efficient increase of national energy resource exploitation in the EAC countries, resulting in reliable, affordable, and sustainable energy access to all the citizenry of the EAC.
Highlights
Access to energy is among the key pillars to socioeconomic and improved life style [1]
The Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) for South Sudan with diesel microgrid technology is the lowest among the other cases analysed in this study as the price for diesel fuel is lower than in the other East African Community (EAC) member countries
The research used a daily load of one luxury house as a research object and carried out modelling and optimization of least cost, efficient, and reliable electricity generation technology among four technologies: (a) diesel energy technology, (b) PV + diesel technology, (c) PV + storage battery, and (d) PV + battery storage + grid, for all the EAC countries
Summary
Access to energy is among the key pillars to socioeconomic and improved life style [1]. There is a huge population around the globe who has not yet acquired access to electricity (estimation of 770 million population globally with energy poverty where around 577.5 million (75%) are located in sub-Saharan Africa) [2, 3]. The East African Community (EAC) countries, which are members of sub-Saharan Africa, are among countries with enough energy resources but still struggling with low electricity access, and to the lower proportion of citizens with electricity access, challenges such as expensive tariffs, frequent blackouts, and unreliable service still persist [4, 5].
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