| dc.description.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 | en_US |
