| dc.description.abstract | In recent times, hybrid renewable energy systems are progressively being utilized to provide
electricity in rural areas where the grid extension is considered too expensive. The current
trend in rural electrification is to utilise renewable energy resources. The majority of
Malawians in rural do not have access to electricity, the changing life styles and adaptations
of new technologies in the rural household and agriculture are stimulating the energy needs in
the rural populace. An easy solution is the provision of renewable energy at local scale with
the available renewable energy resources. The fact that renewable energy sources are also
distributed sources offers an opportunity to save on the capital investment for the
transmission and distribution of electricity.
The aim of this study was to develop the small hybrid power system solution with best techno
economic analysis and optimum configuration of RET for supply electricity in order to power
local communities. First, through field research, an analysis was made of the actual electrical
demand in the Mtambanyama rural community. Secondly the research used empirical and
modelled data of solar irradiance and stream flow rate to ascertain the renewable energy
potential. . Thirdly the costs for the photovoltaic and hydro turbine systems costs, dieselgenerator operation costs were collected from different manufactures. The analysis was
carried out by means of the software HOMER and was based on Mtambanyama village in
Malawi. The feasibility of the use of hybrid PV-Micro hydro systems was analysed by
comparing the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) and Net Present Cost (NPC) of solar
PV-micro hydro with other system configurations.
Thus, this research focused on the optimum design of a hybrid energy system for an isolated
community of Mtambanyama as case study. For the design of off-grid electrification of the
study community, various combinations have been obtained for the hybrid systems with PV,
micro-hydro turbines, batteries, convertors and generators from the HOMER optimization
simulation. Findings were that From the optimal simulation result table the most cost
effective system, i.e. the system with the lowest net present cost, is the PV micro hydro
battery converter configuration and the cost of energy (COE) is 0.0833$/kWh and renewable
resources fraction is approximately 100%. From this we can easily observe that almost the
total portion of energy production is from renewable energy sources. The study proved that
the use hybrid system in Mtambanyama village is financially acceptable and viable | en_US |
