Energetic, environmental and economic aspects of a hybrid renewable energy system: A case study

Abstract

In this study, the solar irradiation and wind speed data of Balikesir in Turkey are analyzed to assess the techno-economic viability and environmental performance of a hybrid power system. Energy is estimated for a typical commercial poultry house, and a system is then designed to satisfy the load demand. As hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) software is used for the simulation of four respective cases: Diesel only, photovoltaic (PV)-diesel-battery, wind-diesel-battery and photovoltaic-wind-diesel-battery. We also evaluate the cost, environmental advantages and benefit of the demand-side management (DSM) when renewable hybrid energy options are applied to the poultry farming. By implementing light control system and high-efficiency fans (with about 20% efficiency increase), annual electricity consumptions can be reduced by 15% with DSM. When DSM was applied to the cost of energy, certain parameters including unmet electric load, excess electricity and greenhouse gas emissions are calculated for each case. Greenhouse gas emissions are also investigated for the hybrid energy system (by integrating PV and wind turbine only into diesel system). The hybrid system thus reduces CO2 emissions from 21.8 to 10t, particulate matter (PM) from 4.1 to 1.9 kg, NOx from 0.421 to 0.221t. A break-even analysis is performed to decide the optimum distance where the hybrid energy system is more economical than the extension of the transmission line. Consequently, the results indicate that installation of the hybrid energy system is more economical than the conventional electricity network when the distance is more than 3.21 and 3.13 km for PV-wind-diesel-battery and wind-diesel-battery, respectively.