Abstract
Energy is an essential factor underpinning all elements of economy in the society. Its utilization greatly depends on the individual’s lifestyle and habitation. In rural areas, people use less electronic appliances compared to urban areas. However, the rapid development in technology and variety of applications have triggered the desire for more power in both rural and urban regions. To meet the energy demand, the world’s generation capacity has to keep growing. Renewable energy sources offer a better solution in quenching this demand. This paper presents the findings on energy utilization and a suitable sized wind/PV system model for an average rural household in Machakos. Energy demand assessment was done using probability sampling which involved clustering and random selection of households. The range of daily energy load in Machakos was found to be 0.052 to 4.23 kWh with most of the households consuming less than 1.5 kWh in a day. The daily average energy consumption for the three selected zones namely; Katheka-kai, Kiandani and Kathiani were 1.092, 0.99 and 1.4 kWh respectively, with an average load of 1.161 kWh. Over 50% of the households consume less than 1 kWh per day where the average loads were 0.56, 0.59 and 0.595 kWh respectively, with a daily average of 0.582 kWh. A wind/PV systems was sized for a sample household with a load of 0.588 kWh. Based on the minimum month solar insolation of 4.677 kWh/m2 and the available wind speed range of 1.0-10.0 m/s in the sites, a stand-alone wind/PV hybrid system was sized with component sizes as: 12 V, 165 W Panel, 12 V, 250 AH battery, 12 V, 225 W inverter and a wind turbine with a cut in, rated and cut-off wind speeds of 1.0, 5.0 and 15.0 m/s.
Highlights
Provision of energy to any developing county is important to alleviate poverty and spur its social-economic development
Energy demand assessment done in Kikwe village in Tanzania reported a total daily energy demand of 601.335, 54.425, 70.01 and 31.254 kWh for residential, community, commercial and small-scale industrial loads respectively
This study focused more on energy demand on small scale basis by considering household with energy load less than 1 kWh per day
Summary
Provision of energy to any developing county is important to alleviate poverty and spur its social-economic development. The high cost of energy creates a International Journal of Sustainable and Green Energy 2021; 10(3): 92-98 heavy burden to low income households in developing countries This makes them spend over 20% of their income on energy, policy makers as a result view energy poverty in communities with a sense of urgency [11]. Sparse demography was noted as one of the factors that partly hinder national grid development in rural and semi urban areas making it costly to setup [19,20,21] Such demographic feature in a country make renewable sources like wind and solar promising in creating of energy access to consumers [22, 23]. This is comparable to the average energy loads for households in Machakos region
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