Abstract
Globally, attention has majorly been focused on pollution and exhaustion of fossil fuels allied to the conventional energy sources while the non-conventional energy/renewable energy sources have always been considered clean and environmentally friendly. Of the two, the non-conventional (renewable) is being preferred because it is believed to be more environmentally friendly. Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) especially Solar Photovoltaics have seen many plants being constructed to either supplement the grid or as alternatives for those far from the grid. Solar Photovoltaics plants occupy large tracts of land which would have been used for other economic activities for revenue generation such as agriculture, forestry or tourism in archaeological sites. The negative impacts slow down the application of Solar PV , but a modelling tool that can easily and quantitively assess the impacts in monetary form would accelerate the Solar PV application. The work presents a developed modelling tool that is able to assess not only the techno-economic impacts but also the environmental impacts in monetary form, for one to be able to determine the viability of a plant in a given region. The results are compared with those of HOMER software.
Highlights
Global attention has largely shifted focus to the generation of electricity using the hybrid renewable energy systems, attributed to the depleting fossil fuels and their GHG emissions [1]
The first part of this paper presents the detailed SPECA model development followed by the available resources and load requirements for testing
LCOE for the SPECA model is 70% more than that of HOMER which has been attributed to lack of monetization of the land costs, environmental cost and the social costs
Summary
Global attention has largely shifted focus to the generation of electricity using the hybrid renewable energy systems, attributed to the depleting fossil fuels and their GHG emissions [1]. The governments of many nations across the word have given direct nomination to these renewable energy systems through the tradable green certificates. This has fostered tremendous efforts in the exploration of renewable energy options especially to the rural areas where grid connection is untenable because of the rugged terrain and sparse population [1, 2]. In this regard, a number of software tools have been suggested for the simulation and optimization of HRES. On the other hand HOMER has demerits such as the incapability to show the optimization
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