Techno-economic and environmental feasibility study with demand-side management of photovoltaic/wind/hydroelectricity/battery/diesel: A case study in Sub-Saharan Africa

This paper presents an optimal design and selection made on four energy systems or configurations with criteria Loss of Power Supply Probability, Cost of Energy, Total Emission and the Diesel Contribution Factor using a Multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization technique; for some rural communities selected from five different countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa region. These communities include BOGO, BOGOMORO, DANTIKA, GARAALI and KASSOUALA. Energy conservation demand-side management strategy is also applied in this study. The results obtained reveal that considerable savings are made with the demand-side management strategy and that Configuration 1 with demand-side management is the best energy system for the communities of BOGO, GARAALI and KASSOUALA; Configuration 2 with demand-side management is the best energy system for the communities of DANTIKA and BOGOMORO. For the case of BOGO, the best configuration consists of 196 solar panels, 10 wind turbines, 1 micro hydro generator, 1.5 days of storage system autonomy and 1 diesel generator with Cost of Energy 0.096 $/kWh, 15080.47 kg of Total Emission and 0.0002% of Diesel Contribution Factor. In DANTIKA, the best configuration 174 solar panels, 9 wind turbines, 1 micro hydro generator, 1.3 days of storage system autonomy with Cost of Energy 0.088 $/kWh and 10524.474 kg of Total Emission. Moreover, the results of this study can provide a good framework in the development of Hybrid renewable energy systems to solve the problem of energy deficit in poor rural communities.

Automated summary

This paper presents an optimal design and selection made on four energy systems using a Multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimization technique in rural communities of Sub-Saharan Africa. The results show that considerable savings can be made with demand-side management strategy, and the best energy system configurations are proposed for different communities.