Waste biomass gasification based off-grid electricity generation: A case study in Pakistan

The objective is to investigate the waste gasification based off-grid electricity generation in developing countries like Pakistan utilizing mixed biomass composts (mixture of agricultural wastes including rice hulls and wheat straw with cow/poultry manure compost). Different scenarios are compared; ( 1) levels of electricity demand and utilization, ( 2) costs for variable biomass mix, ( 3) combined domestic and cottage industry business model. The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is used as an indicator to measure the competitiveness of off-grid electricity generation. There is a large potential of off-grid electricity generation. However, the estimated off-grid electricity price is found to be higher in all scenarios than average governmental electricity tariff. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.