| dc.description.abstract | Access to electricity is essential for infrastructural development, economic growth, and better living
standards in any country. However, the access rate to reliable grid electricity services in West Africa
remains very low when compared to developed countries in the world. This situation is even worst in
rural communities because of the high cost of grid extension. In order to improve electricity access rate
to rural communities in Burkina Faso, an approach has been developed known as the flexy energy
concept at the International Institute for Water and Environment Engineering (2iE). This concept is
composed of a PV/diesel hybrid system without a storage system. The storage unit is excluded due to
the high investment cost of batteries and other environmental issues. However, for the management of
the system, the storage aspect could be considered to support the load for a few hours of autonomy. In
this study, three scenarios were investigated, such as PV/diesel with and without battery storage, and
conventional standalone diesel generators for the same load profile by using HOMER software. From
the optimization results obtained shows that the best optimal scenario is the PV/diesel/battery hybrid
configuration, which has a Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) of US$ 0.524/kWh, and a total net
present cost (NPC) of US$ 1,177,376. The storage system for the optimal configuration composed of 72
batteries, which is capable of powering the load for about 8.12 hours of autonomy. Concerning the
environmental impact assessment, the CO2 emission produced by the PV/diesel/battery system was
reduced by 29.68% and 23.4% when compared to the scenario with conventional generators and the
scenario with PV/diesel hybrid system without storage respectively. Moreover, in order to assess the
effect of fuel prices on the LCOE and the NPC for the optimal system, a sensitivity analysis was
performed. From the results obtained it is recommended that for energy management of the power plant
in Bilgo village it is necessary to include an optimal storage unit in order to reduce the operating and
maintenance cost of running diesel generators, reduce the excess electricity produced from the system,
and as well minimize the emission produced by the system | en_US |
