Design and Optimization of Standalone Photovoltaic Power System for Ethiopian Rural School Electrification

Abstract

Power is one of the basic need of the Ethiopian society and organization for cooking, lighting and to run different office or other place electrical devices like TV, radio, computer, fans etc. In Ethiopia grid electrical power supply is still not supplied to rural communities or organization due to the geographical topography difficulty as well as the shortage of grid power and Ethiopia has enough potential of solar energy resource. This paper presents a renewable standalone photo voltaic power system to electrify the selected rural school which are far from grid power supply for ceiling fan, office phone, lighting, computer, printer, radio and TV consumption. Therefore, this study focused on the design and optimization of the power system components by using homer software. The solar resource of the for the school site is collected. The electrical energy demand of the selected school, number of PV modules, payback period and other corresponding components as well as the initial cost estimation of the power system components and optimization of the standalone power system is done by homer software. There are 42 solar photo voltaic modules needed for the estimation energy demand of school with the energy cost of the power generated 0.13$/kwh and cash inflow 3431.1$/year for the payback period of 6.5 years.