Abstract
One-quarter of the world’s population lives without access to electricity. Unfortunately, the generation technology most commonly employed to advance rural electrification, diesel generation, carries considerable commercial and ecological risks. One approach used to address both the cost and pollution of diesel generation is renewable energy (RE) integration. However, to successfully integrate RE, both the stochastic nature of the RE resource and the operating characteristics of diesel generation require careful consideration. Typically, diesel generation is configured to run heavily loaded, achieving peak efficiencies within 70–80% of rated capacity. Diesel generation is also commonly sized to peak demand. These characteristics serve to constrain the possible RE penetration. While energy storage can relieve the constraint, this adds cost and complexity to the system. This paper identifies an alternative approach, redefining the low load capability of diesel generation. Low load diesel (LLD) allows a diesel engine to operate across its full capacity in support of improved RE utilization. LLD uses existing diesel assets, resulting in a reduced-cost, low-complexity substitute. This paper presents an economic analysis of LLD, with results compared to conventional energy storage applications. The results identify a novel pathway for consumers to transition from low to medium levels of RE penetration, without additional cost or system complexity.
Highlights
Isolated and remote power systems cannot rely upon traditional grid connection, which becomes economically unviable over large distances [1]
Economic simulation allows for rapid evaluation across a range of system architectures, Economic simulation allows for rapid evaluation across range of system simulation architectures, component sizes and
Priorwere to assessment low load application, simulation results for increasing renewable energy penetration validatedofagainst the performance of the King
Summary
Isolated and remote power systems cannot rely upon traditional grid connection, which becomes economically unviable over large distances [1]. For these communities, diesel generation represents the mainstay of their power supply infrastructure [2]. Diesel has offered available, affordable, reliable, and well-supported generation solutions [3]. Renewable energy (RE) technologies have established themselves as clean and cost-competitive alternatives to diesel [6,7]. While a range of enabling technologies exist to support RE penetrations within hybrid systems, the cost and complexity of these solutions can be significant [3,9]. Prior research has identified multiple barriers to medium- and high-penetration RE integration, with system cost, complexity and flexibility as common issues [10,11]
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