Feasibility Analysis of Hybrid Renewable Energy Systems in a Commercial Building by Enhancing Renewable Resources using HOMER Software

Abstract

Integrating and expanding renewable energy resources on the customer's end is revolving as a hot trending topic especially in developing countries for sustainable energy trading. Owing to that, India welcomes the active participation of prosumers for self-utilization and to contribute to the local energy markets. The biggest challenge from the customer end is integrating renewable resources having intermittent nature due to adverse environmental factors. To mitigate the challenges of using highly dynamic renewable sources, a detailed investigation of the Hybrid Energy System (HES) is in need. The presented paper creates a proposal for upgrading the existing system – Quantanics Techserv private limited located in the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu, India. The system comprises four different energy resources namely solar PV panels as a renewable source, diesel generation, and battery storage as supporting supply systems along with grid supply from the state electricity board (Tamil Nadu Electricity Board - TNEB). The study mainly accounted to verify the feasibility of updating the existing PV system concerning location data and load traces using the Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables (HOMER) software. The optimal results are extracted based on economic and environmental aspects. This techno-economic analysis gives comparative results under two distinguished dispatch strategies (Load Following and Cycle charging). The optimal configuration for both existing and upgrading PV system is found with a minimum Net Price Cost (NPC) and Levelized Cost of Energy (COE) respectively.