OPTIMAL SIZING AND ANALYSIS OF A SUSTAINABLE SOLAR PHOTO VOLTAIC-BIOMASS HYBRID ENERGY SYSTEM FOR LEARNING INSTITUTIONS

Abstract

Access to quality energy is a necessity for the growing world. There is an increasing demand for clean and quality energy due to the ever-growing world population and development of new technologies. However, energy access is still a significant challenge globally and to learning institutions. Learning Institutions suffer from limited to no access to electricity due to unreliability of the grid extension that supply them with power. The main back up system for learning Institutions in Kenya is often diesel generators, which have high maintenance, and running costs in addition to emitting harmful gaseous emissions to the environment. To achieve environmental safety, sustainability and quality energy, renewable energy resources technologies need to be developed to help in the reduction of carbon footprints. The main objective of this research is to design and optimize a renewable energy system that can be used to power learning institutions which is also less sensitive to external conditions such as changes in solar irradiation levels and changing inflation costs. This research presents a sustainable, less sensitive, and optimal configuration of a hybrid renewable energy system (Solar PV-Biomass energy system) with storage needed to power Masinde Muliro University of science and Technology. It moreover, presents a techno economic analysis for achieving the least cost configuration which is sustainable on using historical demand and supply data for the University. The results show that due to the high solar irradiance within the region (5.9 kWh/m2 /day) and high levels of biomass due to high university population, a larger percent of energy shall be generated by the two energy resources. This energy mix was compared with other nine energy mix based on economical, technical and sustainability parameters. The results show that the integration of 360 kW of solar PV array, 540 kW of Biomass Generator, 142 kW converter and 576 strings of 1 kW lead-acid batteries storage bank is the best configuration that leads to an optimum configuration with the LCOE of 0.1026 $/kWh in MMUST. Key words: solar, biomass, analysis, optimization, sensitivity, sustainability