Application of Hybrid Power Network to Ajoki Community

Abstract

The study examines the application of hybrid power network in Ajoki community located in Edo state Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Power supply to Ajoki community is very unstable and unreliable due to high operation and maintenance cost, and fuel cost associated with diesel generator. This has impacted negatively on the educational, economic, medical and social services required for the livelihood of Ajoki community with a population of 2845. This research proposes a Distributed Hybrid Renewable Energy Sources (DHRES) comprising of Solar, wind and diesel generator, modeled using the HOMER Software. The solar irradiance and wind speed data are collected from NIMET data base and fed into HOMER software. The result obtained shows that in the base case when only diesel generator is in use for 24hrs/day for a year, a total of 959,220 kWh/yr of Electricity is produced and consumed. The total Net Present Costs (NPC) is ₦1.64B with breakdown as follows: capital cost at N80.0M, O&M cost at N363M, replacement cost at ₦546M, and fuel cost at ₦661M. Similarly, the total greenhouse emission (GHE) in the base case is 675,803.2kg/yr. However, after optimization of the hybrid system, a total of 241409 kWh/yr of Electricity is produced. With 24.3% from PV, 9.97% from diesel generator, and 65.7% from wind turbine. The total Net Present Costs (NPC) is ₦288M with breakdown as follows : capital cost at N220M, O&M cost at N18.2M, replacement cost at ₦44.9M, salvage cost at ₦17.3M, resource at ₦22.7M. The total greenhouse emission (GHE) is 23220.75kg/yr. Therefore, the total harmful emission saved using DHRES = (675803.2kg/yr-23220.756kg/yr) = 652582.444kg/yr. The DHRES simulation and optimization indicates that DHRES are feasible with a low NPC, Operating and Maintenance cost, and Cost of Electricity (COE) compared to the existing power supply from a 320kW Caterpillar (CAT) diesel generator which operates for 12hrs from 1800hrs to 0700hrs when the generator is healthy.