Feasibility of agriculture biomass power generation in Morocco: Techno-economic analysis

All over the world, agriculture is both the food provider and an energy-intensive consumer, basically in developing countries. Thus, energy inputs into agriculture are often from fossil origin. Nevertheless, rural development cannot be done without food security and energy independence. In line with this target, it is proposed that energy from biomass could achieve sustainability, especially in rural areas where poverty and scarcity of energy raised continually. To this end, a techno-economic analysis is progressively developed to examine the opportunity of biomass power generation to furnish clean electricity for rural areas in Morocco. The purpose of this effective work is to valorize the untapped potential of agricultural biomass waste, aiming to achieve rural sustainability and reach a stable electricity supply. For this aim, a case study was drawn at the strategic geographical region Fes-Meknes, which possesses a particular agricultural potential of 4.22 million tons, equivalent to over 0.5 Mtep/year. Performance results showed that only with olive residues, the selected power systems has the po-tential, of about 2828.11 GWh/year with an annual capacity factor of 82.5%. The system power generated in 8761 h per year can supply electricity to 254,252 households. Indeed, to compensate monthly varia-tions of electricity load and demand, the energy produced is assumed to be supplied to the national grid, and from there, recovered by the local villages. The main results of the financial model can be perceived as a total installed cost of 3755.70 $/kW. The average real and nominal LCOE of 17.23 and 15.03 cents/kWh respectively, which is exceptionally competitive to solar concentrated technology and fossil resources. Moreover, this work carried both sensitivity and parametric studies to evidence key operating and financial parameters with the most influential effect on the performance indexes. Besides, the results properly show that performance variables depend strongly on flue gas temperature and the LCOE is exceedingly sensitive to feedstock price and finance rates. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Biomass power generation in rural areas of Morocco presents a significant opportunity to achieve rural sustainability and provide stable electricity supply. The financial model of the project shows competitive costs compared to solar and fossil resources. Performance variables depend strongly on flue gas temperature, and the LCOE is highly sensitive to feedstock price and finance rates.