Abstract:
Reliable electricity access is essential for rural development for enhanced healthcare, education, and economic growth. Expanding the Rwanda national grid is costly and difficult mainly due to geographical location, old network, fund constraints, and even regions with electricity face reliability issues. That is the main reason for this study “Optimal configuration of solar PV and biomass-based hybrid power system with battery storage” aims to extract the local renewable energy resources that remain underutilized at Ntarama Health Center, and to ensure its cost-effective energy production. The current load profile of Ntarama H.C is 108.540 kWh/day, the time series energy consumption profile results in an annual growth rate of 11.3%, and the forecasted load within five years to accommodate future demand was found to be 185.38 kWh/day. Ntarama health center is located at W27P+CF8, Ntarama, Bugesera, Rwanda (2°5.2'S, 30°2.2'E), with annual averaged solar radiation and biomass potential of 5.04 kWh/m2/day and 0.74 ton/day respectively.
HOMER Pro is used to carry out optimization, simulation, and sensitivity analysis, considering electrical load, climate data, and economic factors whereby maximum daily consumption is 185.38 kWh, and a peak load demand becomes 22.93 kW with a load factor of 0.34. HOMER Pro provided optimal configuration basing on low total net present cost. The Simulation revealed the optimal configuration which consists of 50kW photovoltaic array with 88.9% energy contribution, 21 kW biogas generator with 11.1% energy contribution, two strings of 67 batteries each with 451.75 kWh, and 30 kW system converter with HOMER Cycle Charging dispatch strategy. The total Net Present Cost (NPC) is $170,587.90, whereas the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) is $0.194.
The system meets all load demands, without capacity shortage with only an annual electricity surplus of approximately 2,795 kWh (3.37 %) with an annual saving of 446,582.4 Rwf over the national grid, and the initial investment will be recovered within 7.10 years.
