An economic and environment friendly solution for the rural households' energy crisis in Egypt

Abstract

The demand for electrical energy increased drastically due to the exponential growth of the world population. In the last decade, owing to environmental issues and decay of non-renewable energy resources, the development of power generation from hydrokinetic energy has grown considerably. Many individuals and companies are considering hydrokinetic power as the better solution to the prevailing energy crisis. However, there is a paucity of published literature that sheds light on the economic and environmental sides of hydrokinetic turbines (HKTs) in hybrid renewable energy systems (HRES). The prime objective of this study is to provide an economic and environmental assessment of using the HKT in combination with other renewable energy resources for cost-effective, reliable, and sustainable electrical energy supply for the rural households in Naga Hammadi, Egypt, where adequate water resources are available from the Nile River. The HKT is simulated together with photovoltaic (PV), diesel generator (DG), and battery (B) power using the well-known Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Electric Renewables software to optimize the HRES. The net present cost (NPC) of the optimum HRES is $12.7 million with minimal cost of energy of $0.158/kWh. The optimum system is capable of saving approximately $9.7 million during the project lifetime (25 years) in the form of NPC as compared to the diesel generator system. In addition, the system is capable of saving 28.971 × 106 l of fuel at the cost of $5.11 million during the project lifetime. Finally, it is concluded that the hybrid PV/HKT/DG/B is the more economic and environment friendly system as compared to other system configurations especially the diesel generator system, because it is able to reduce 76.29 × 106 kg of the amount of CO2 emissions during the project lifetime.