Browsing by Author "Abraha, Alfa Hailemaria"

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    Hybrid solar-wind diesel systems for rural application in North Ethiopia
    (University of Dar es Salaam, 2011) Abraha, Alfa Hailemaria
    Due to the decentralized residential areas; which resulted in a dispersed demand and very low level of electricity consumption,establishing a central power supply in rural regions requires a lot of expenditure and is therefore not viable. Despite the fact that 80% of Ethiopia's population live in rural areas, electricity access is mainly in cities and urban areas. Decentralized electricity supply based on renewable energy is an alternative way of addressing the energy problems in rural areas of developing countries. This research demonstrates the feasibility of solar - wind - diesel based hybrid energy supply systems for nine sites in North Ethiopia. HOMER software is used to optimize and model the different system options. It basically performs optimization, simulation and sensitivity analysis for micro power systems. Wind data obtained from the Ethiopian Meteorological Agency and monthly averages of daily solar insolation determined using Angstrom's equation were used in this study. Basically three types of hybrid system; solar - wind - diesel with high wind penetration, solar - wind - diesel with high solar penetration and solar - diesel systems, were obtained depending on the predominant resource in each site. The cost of electricity increases with the increase in PY penetration. The emission reduction is larger in solar - wind - diesel systems with higher PV penetration than that of solar -wind -diesel where by wind penetration is higher.