Efficiency of Grid-Connected Photovoltaic System in the Dairy Farms: Case Study in the Mediterranean Region (Tlemcen)

Abstract

With the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, renewable energies have become a promising solution to reduce global warming and pollution. One of the government’s goals is to introduce renewable energy in all sectors, especially the agricultural sector, which relies heavily on fossil fuels to operate milking cooling systems and other systems. This article presents a real study on the feasibility and efficiency of Grid connected PV system on a dairy farm, in Tlemcen province. It’s a typical farm that consumes about 42MWh / year of electrical energy. On this basis, we will dimension the system using the HOMER software, to feed this farm. A Grid connected PV system of 30W could produce 54.03MWh/yr, with Renewable Fraction of 53%, and 28.54kWh/yr was generated from the PV array, and 25.44kWh/yr is the amount of electricity purchased by the grid, while, the energy injected into the grid was estimated at 8.430 MWh/yr. In order to show the feasibility of this system we will proposed another system based on diesel generator, so that we can economically compare between the two systems, the lowest net present cost (NPC) of Diesel system of 25kW was estimated at 826$, with a cost of energy (COE) of 1.51$/kWh, while, the highest net present cost (NPC) of PV-Grid system (40kW) is 233$, and the cost of energy (COE) is 0.42$/ kWh. Therefore, this study shows the effectiveness of the grid-PV system in economic and environmental terms, thus, the use of this system in most dairy farms in Algeria contributes to the development of national agricultural production.