Design of Optimal Hybrid Renewable Energy System for Sustainable Power Supply to Isolated-grid Communities in North Central, Nigeria

Abstract

The study analyzed the feasibility and techno-economic viability of renewable electricity generation from wind and solar standalone systems, and as hybrid facilities in six states across North-central, Nigeria. 24 years’ daily solar and wind data were sourced from the Nigeria Meteorological Department, Oshodi. The dataset was analyzed and employed to design an alternative RE power supply system as a test case for university communities with an equivalent consumption of 28.9 MWh/day. The electricity load demand adopted was based on an audit of electricity generation conducted for the University of Lagos main campus. The supply architecture adopted in this study excludes the use of heavy equipment or machinery loads and only caters for the institutions’ base loads. An evaluation of the design that will optimally match the daily load demand of the communities with LOLP ranging from 1 to 50% was undertaken. HOMER software was employed as the optimisation tool together with other statistical and analytical variations to determine best design for the sites with diesel standalone facility taken as the base system. The outcome showed that hybrid generation system fared better than the standalone PV or Wind energy system at Abuja, Ilorin, Lokoja and Makurdi, while the wind standalone system was the optimal generation technology at Minna and Jos. Further to this, values of the levelized cost of energy showed that adopting wind resources (as standalone or in hybrid format with PV) for power generation at the sites/institutions at Minna and Jos, is more viable than the use of diesel generators.