Abstract
This paper aims to investigate the techno-economic feasibility analysis of stand-alone diesel system, stand-alone PV/storage system, PV/diesel hybrid system, PV/diesel/storage hybrid system for the Pratas island in Taiwan. The power supply of outlying islands in Taiwan still use fossil fuel generators. The fuel cost is higher than that of on shore of Taiwan, and it has a great impact on the environment. This problem can be mitigated by hybrid energy systems. Through the investigation to know the existing generator set and Photovoltaic (PV) operating status, load consumption, etc., the study collects the required data for statistical meteorological analysis and economic analysis, and uses Hybrid Optimization Models for Energy Resources (HOMER) to simulate techno-economics of the stated hybrid energy systems. The analysis contains the capital cost, net present cost (NPC), cost of energy (COE) and fuel saving in different capacities for each power supply system with different constraints. From the simulation results, the lowest COE is 0.3569 $/kWh that can be found at the PV/diesel hybrid system configuration scheme with a total PV system capacity of 200 kWp, the renewable fraction (RF) is 15.3% and the excess electricity fraction is 2.6%, which is lower than the generally acceptable 5%. Although the COE of PV/diesel/storage hybrid is higher than that of stand-alone diesel system, the annual total CO2 emissions is reduced by 31.63%, which is of great benefit to environmental protection.
Highlights
Energy is considered as a crucial contributor to the development of societies
The research in this article is mainly to perform a techno-economic analysis of the mini-grid hybrid renewable energy system, which includes the analysis of the cost of energy (COE) of stand-alone PV/storage system under different capacity shortage fraction conditions, the PV/diesel system capacity with the lowest COE can be found by changing the PV capacities, and the PV/diesel/storage hybrid system considers the limits of excess electricity fraction under different renewable fraction (RF) percentage intervals and finds the capacity of lowest COE of each RF percentage intervals
STAND-ALONE PV/STORAGE SYSTEM This section discusses the scenario of PV/storage system power supply, which provides hundred percent of renewable energy and meets the load demand and has no CO2 emission problem [54]
Summary
Fossil fuel is the main source of electricity and discharges large amounts of toxic gasses into our atmosphere. Renewable sources such as solar photovoltaics, wind, biomass, small hydropower, etc. A stand-alone generation of electricity from renewables become an attractive option for remote communities that cannot be viable to the main power grid [4], [5]. The consideration of renewable energy sources has become necessary due to the ever rising oil prices as well as the environmental challenges associated with greenhouse gas emission [6]–[10]. Power quality, stability and reliability, are main problems for renewable energy sources because of their unpredictable, seasonal, and time-dependent
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