IJETSI

Title: OPTIMAL DESIGN OF A SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC MINI-GRID FOR ELECTRIFYING RWUMBA VILLAGE OF RWANDA
Authors: Augustin Munyaneza , Keren Kaberere and Maurice K. W Mangoli
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Augustin Munyaneza1* , Keren Kaberere2 and Maurice K. W Mangoli3 1. Department of Energy Technology, Engineering Building, KU, 43844 Nairobi, Kenya 2. Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, EM Building, JKUAT, 62,000 Nairobi, Kenya 3. Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering, Engineering Building, KU, 43844 Nairobi, Kenya *. Corresponding Author
MLA 8 Munyaneza, Augustin, et al. "OPTIMAL DESIGN OF A SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC MINI-GRID FOR ELECTRIFYING RWUMBA VILLAGE OF RWANDA." IJETSI, vol. 4, no. 5, Sept.-Oct. 2019, pp. 272-284, ijetsi.org/more2019.php?id=22. Accessed Oct. 2019. APA Munyaneza, A., Kaberere, K., & Mangoli, M. (2019, September/October). OPTIMAL DESIGN OF A SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC MINI-GRID FOR ELECTRIFYING RWUMBA VILLAGE OF RWANDA. IJETSI, 4(5), 272-284. Retrieved from ijetsi.org/more2019.php?id=22 Chicago Munyaneza, Augustin, Keren Kaberere, and Maurice K. W Mangoli. "OPTIMAL DESIGN OF A SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAIC MINI-GRID FOR ELECTRIFYING RWUMBA VILLAGE OF RWANDA." IJETSI 4, no. 5 (September/October 2019), 272-284. Accessed October, 2019. ijetsi.org/more2019.php?id=22.
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Abstract: Universal access of energy is a requisite ingredient for any country geared towards achieving its economic goals. Rural areas of developing countries don't have access to electricity due to the high cost of transmission which hinders their development. Rwumba Village in Rwanda has no access to electricity from the national grid. As such, the current paper proposed the use of solar energy option as a solution to the problem. Therefore, a solar photovoltaic mini-grid that can provide the required power for the village was designed and optimized using HOMER software. The software simulated various combinations of inputs at different reliabilities and proposed the most optimum combinations. The best results corresponding to the optimum PV mini-grid were obtained at capacity shortage of 3%. These results are as follows: PV panels capacity of 34 kW, battery bank storage of nominal capacity of 384 kWh that will be able to store energy for 3 days during cloudy days and power inverter of 15 kW. The cost of energy for the designed mini-grid was found to be USD 0.316 per kWh. Comparing the cost of energy obtained with the existing costs, this was found to be most affordable. Thus, it is worthy to recommend public and private institutions involved in solar mini-grid development and implementation to consider the optimum mini-grids which will result in fair cost of energy that can be afforded by a big number of end users.

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