Hybrid off-grid renewable power system for sustainable rural electrification in Benin

Oluwarotimi Delano Thierry Odou, Ramchandra Bhandari and Rabani Adamou

Renewable Energy, 2020, vol. 145, issue C, 1266-1279

Abstract: Providing power to rural communities, which are far from the grid and suffer from lack of energy access in Africa, especially in Benin, in a sustainable manner requires the adoption of appropriate technology. This paper aims at analysing the techno-economic feasibility of hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) for sustainable rural electrification in Benin, using a case study of Fouay village. HOMER software is used to perform optimization, simulation and sensitivity analysis. The analysis showed that hybrid solar photovoltaics (PV)/diesel generator (DG)/battery (of 150 kW/62.5 kVA/637 kWh) is the least cost optimal system. This system ensures a reliable power supply, reduces battery requirements by 70% compared to PV/battery system and achieves 97% CO2 emissions reduction compared to a conventional DG. Moreover, the study demonstrated that the most economical HRES depends strongly on the potential energy sources available at a location and power plant's remoteness from the beneficiary. In summary, as solar radiation is an abundant resource across the country, this hybrid PV/DG/battery system can be a suitable model to power remote areas in Benin, and we recommend it for future electrification projects in the country in place of the current widely deployed PV/battery system.

Keywords: Levelized cost of electricity; Hybrid energy system; Sustainability; Rural electrification; HOMER; Benin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148119308547
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:145:y:2020:i:c:p:1266-1279

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.06.032

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().