IMPLEMENTATION AND FEASIBILITY STUDY OF RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES FOR ELECTRIFICATION

Abstract

Ethiopian countries have one of the regions with the lowest electricity access rates, particularly in rural
areas. The main reason for the low rate of services is the distance between these communities, geological location,
economy of country, the electricity grid and lack of capacity of installed generation of power plant in the country. In
many cases extension of the grid to rural communities is difficult due to high costs. Off-grid power systems are selfsufficient electrical networks, consisting of small-scale power generation and distribution, which can supply electricity to
a community that is not yet connected to the grid. The energy problem of rural differs from those in urban because rural
need to manage their own energy supplies. The rural are decent test divans for the utilization of renewable energy
production and storage technologies. Wind and photovoltaic (PV) based power generation are two of the most promising
renewable energy technologies. Fuel cell (FC) systems also show great potential in applications of the future due to their
fast technological development and the merits they have, such as high efficiency, zero or low emissions (of pollutant
gases) and flexible modular structure. The main power for the hybrid system comes from the solar and wind energy while
the fuel cell and rechargeable batteries are used as a secondary and primary energy back up units respectively. In this
work, implementation and feasibility study of renewable energy (using HOMER) of emission free hybrid power system of
solar, wind and fuel cell power source unit for a given rural village, Abomsa that can meet the electricity demand in a
sustainable manner has been studied.