This paper demonstrates the optimum design and techno-economic assessment of hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) for rural electrification in the remote district of Korkadu, India. The renewable energy resources namely solar photovoltaic, wind turbine and bio generators are considered as the main sources because of its high potential in Korkadu district. This paper estimates the load forecasting for the selected district, which is a mixture of different load patterns namely residential, commercial, institutional and agricultural demands. The desired HRES has to meet the forecasted load demand for reliable electrification. The optimum design and techno-economic analysis of proposed HRES system is carried using powerful tool HOMER. This study also compares HRES’s operational behavior with different operational strategies such as load following strategy, cycle charging strategy and combined strategy of the system. The outcome of the proposed dispatched strategy expressed the contribution of solar power as 86.8%, wind as 12.7% and bio gen power as 0.5% to meet out developed rural load pattern with 6.8% of battery bank losses and 1.78% of converter losses. This research work also illustrate the HRES based power generation can be a cost effective sustainable power alternative to the conventional grid extension system.

Introduction

Total power generation capacity of India was 340 GW as on March 2018, a major portion of which 65% was from fossil fuels such as coal, oil etc. whole the renewable energy, natural gases based energy generation contributed to 19.2% [1]. The research says that still 240 millions of India are living in dark without electricity and most of the electrified villages have poor quality of electricity especially during the peak demand period i.e., during summer [1,2]. Government of India has initiated several schemes, namely, Remote Village Electrification Program (RVEP), Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY), Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar mission (JNNSM) etc., for addressing this issue and for ensuring electrification of the rural areas in India [1,3]. The main objective of these schemes is to ensure clean source of electricity generation for the electrification of un-electrified villages in India. Various researchers have proposed an attractive solution called the Renewable Energy based Hybrid Rural Electrification System (REHRES). But the main challenges in this proposed solution relate to system reliability, power management and economical cost of energy. In addition, wide variations are seen in the renewable energy availability and its potential depending on their geographical location. Hence the optimum sizing is considered as an important parameter for the development of an efficient and economical REHRES. In recent years, various researchers have proposed the solution for REHRES worldwide such as Hydrogen fuel system based hybrid energy system has been deployed in Newfoundland [4], Solar/wind/hydrogen based HRE [5], solar/wind powered reversed osmosis system [6], PV/ wind/battery based isolated island system [7] these study clearly expressed the issues related with HRE system sizing and necessity of performance optimization of the system.