Techno-economic and Environmental Analysis of a Hybrid Renewable Energy System for Residential Homes

Abstract

Hybrid renewable energy systems (HRESs) are becoming more prevalent as they are viewed as economic off-grid sources of clean energy that could help reduce rural electrification and global warming problems. This thesis aims to provide a techno-economic feasibility and environmental analysis of a HRES to be designed for meeting a daily load requirement of 389.4 kWh/day with a peak load of 82.71 kW, represented by the energy demand of thirty houses located in Al-Qurayyat city (near the Technical College for Boys), Al Jouf Province, KSA. Thus, the aim of this thesis coincides with the 2030 and 2060 visions of KSA, which promote sustainable energy solutions and net zero CO2 emissions, respectively. Moreover, the objectives of the research could be divided over two stages. First, a HRES consisting of PV, WT, a DG, converter and lead-acid BSS is considered. Simulation of the system is achieved by HOMER software to obtain the optimum configuration. After considering six arrangements, the results reveal that the ideal arrangement is indeed the PV/WT/DG/Converter/BSS with an optimized NPC and COE of $358,616, and $0.166/kWh while attaining a RF percentage of 92.8%. An alternative configuration, consisting of PV/WT/Converter/BSS would yield a 100% RF but with a NPC of $475,374 and COE of $0.22/kWh. The technical results show that the proposed HRES produces a total annual energy of 285,750 kWh/year with the PV, WT, and DG contributing 91.2%, 5.21%, and 3.58%, correspondingly. Regarding the environmental assessment, the optimized hybrid system saves a total of 206,678 kg of greenhouse gases each year. In the second stage, the proposed HRES will be compared with another HRES comprised of CPV, WT, DG and BSS. The objective is to determine the effectiveness of utilizing CPVs in hybrid systems over regular PVs in order to determine the more economic solar technology to be incorporated in the HRES, and this is where the novelty of the study lies. The CPV-HRES has a NPC and COE of $878,042 and $0.406/kWh, correspondingly with an annual energy generation of 434,731 kWh/year. Hence, the PV technology is the more economic choice even though it has a lower energy yield than CPV.