Abstract:
Pakistan is a developing country, facing energy crisis due to increase in population
and rapid urbanization. Pakistan mainly depends upon its conventional energy
resources which are depleting day by day because of the excessive increase in demand
for energy. The electricity shortfall duration in summer was 14–18 h in rural areas and
8–10 h in urban areas. Currently, it is a big challenge for the Government to overcome
the shortfall of energy. The modern world is meeting up most of its energy demand
from renewables, Pakistan also needs to focus on the best utilization of its available
large renewable energy resources to overcome the shortfall of energy. This shift will
raise the contribution of renewables in the total energy mix of Pakistan, lower the cost
of electricity and reduce the carbon footprint. The main purpose of this study is to
model a technical and economically viable standalone/hybrid (PV/Wind/Diesel Gen.
/Battery) off-grid/grid-connected energy system for the rural/remote areas having poor
electrification. Weather data for wind speed and solar irradiance (kWh/m2/day) is
taken from Meteorological High Precision (MHP) stations, as well as from NASA
weather database accordingly selected site. For efficient modeling, five different
software like as RETScreen, Homer Pro, SAM, PVSyst and SOLAGIS were evaluated
on different parameters by designing a similar sized system with similar components
and weather conditions. During the analysis, capacity factor results were compared to
find out more efficient modeling tool. Later on Homer Pro was chosen for the detailed
study due to having good capacity factor and for its unique feature of system
optimization. Which makes the system design size more efficient and reliable
accordingly to local weather conditions. So, wind/solar/diesel hybrid systems were
modeled using HOMER Pro to perform optimization and analysis for all the selected
Provincial capitals and two remote areas for each Province of Pakistan using their own
weather data. While viability is examined on financial parameters like the cost of
energy (COE) and net present cost (NPC). The results from analysis show that the
proposed hybrid energy system is more feasible than single source energy systems for
all selected sites for its lower cost of energy. Thus hybrid renewable energy system
can act as a reliable energy resource for the electrification of rural, remote far-flung
areas and the communities having no ease of access to the electricity in Pakistan.
