A Feasibility Study of an On-grid Solar Home System in Bangladesh

Sanjida Moury, R. Ahshan

Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland E-mail: Sanjida.moury@mun.ca

Abstract: Electricity demand is now the basic need for the current civilization in every moment. Especially for the developing countries such as Bangladesh has the energy crisis and is one of the challenging issues to progress the country future. Shortage of electric power generation causes a significant amount of load shading everyday. Lack of fossil fuel reservation is a global issue. In addition, fossil fuel based power generation is not also environment friendly. Considering all these barriers, a renewable on-grid power generation system can be a better option for Bangladesh. This paper presents the feasibility study of an on-grid solar power generation system for a typical house in Bangladesh. The load demand of a house in Dhaka city is taken as a case to perform this study. The proposed solar home system is simulated in HOMER and the detail analysis, system description and results are presented in this paper.

2. Present Energy Scenario in Bangladesh

At present the power demand in Bangladesh is about 5500MW, whereas the generation ranges only 32004000MW. The generation capacity is 4300MW. . But peak demand is estimated to exceed 5,000 MW [2]. As a result of power shortage causes excessive load shading. Bangladesh relies heavily on fossil fuels for its energy especially on gas resources. But the present proven reserve would be depleted by 2015 [3]. Coal is still the major fuel for power generation. Bangladesh has sufficient high quality coal resources. But the coal mining is not started. Exploration and development of natural gas resource has almost reduced to zero. Also the exploration of coal continues to remain uncertain. The shortage of power can be met by renewable energy which is abundant in nature. In Bangladesh the development of renewable energy is insufficient. The one and only hydro power plant is in Karnaphuly can generate 230MW [4]. The coastal areas and the north-eastern regions contain areas with high wind, and small-scale wind energy conversion system could be built only on that area [5]. Grameen Sakti (GS) is working on solar home system. But GSs solar program mainly targets those areas, which have no access to conventional electricity and a little chance of getting connected to the grid within 5 to 10 years [6]. In this paper the feasibility study of an on-grid solar home system for Bangladesh is performed. An optimization tool called Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER version 2.67 beta) developed by National Renewable Energy laboratory (NREL), is used to size the proposed system.

1. Introduction
Energy is one of the main concerns for the growing future of any nation. Energy is by far the largest merchandise in the world and an enormous amount of energy is extracted, distributed, converted and consumed in our global society daily. The global energy demand is continuously increasing. Todays global energy production is highly, in fact 83% [1] dependent on fossil fuel resources such as oil, gas and coal. These resources are limited and their use results global warming due to emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Interest in renewable energy has depended on the perceived risks of using fossil fuels. To provide a sustainable power production in future and at the same time be concern about global warming, there is a growing demand for energy from renewable resources such as wind, solar, geothermal and ocean. The sun is the source of the life on our planet Earth and, directly or indirectly, is the fuel for most renewable systems. Photovoltaic and solar thermal systems, as well as solar thermal power stations, convert solar irradiation directly into useable energy. Each square meter of the sun's surface emits a radiant power of 63.1 MW, which means that just a fifth of a square kilometer of the sun's surface emits an amount of energy equal to the global primary energy demand on earth. Only a small part of this energy reaches the earth's surface. This resource can be used to meet the global energy demand.

3. An on-grid Solar Home System

Solar electric systems, which are also called photovoltaic or PV systems, are reliable and pollution-free. They make use of a renewable source of energythe sun. Photovoltaic (PV) systems convert sunlight directly to electricity. They work any time the sun is shining, but more electricity is produced when the sunlight is more intense and strikes the PV modules directly. The basic building block of PV technology is the solar cell. Multiple PV cells are connected to form a PV module, the smallest PV component sold commercially.

A PV system connected or tied to the utility grid (fig.1) has these components: a) One or more PV modules, which are connected to an inverter. b) The converter, which converts the system's directcurrent (DC) electricity to alternating current (AC) and vice versa. c) Batteries (optional) to provide energy storage or backup power in case of a power interruption or outage on the grid.

March April May June July August September October November December Total

280 380 365 350 360 330 300 300 270 260 3675

31 30 31 30 31 31 30 31 30 31 366

Fig. 1 Typical residential grid-connected PV system

An ordinary house in Dhaka, may consume around 12kWh/d with a peak demand of nearly 1.1403kW. Meeting such a load by only solar energy source is not practical. A set of energy consumption data for a typical grid-connected house in Dhakas was collected. For a typical day energy consumption is higher in the evening hours (Fig. 2). On the other hand, summer months especially the month of April the power consumption is highest.

4. A Case Study
Since the performance of a renewable energy system is highly dependant on the environmental conditions, a site specic analysis is required to investigate the associated cost, component size and overall economics. In this paper, a feasibility study is done for a house in Dhaka city of Bangladesh. Solar irradiation data is taken for the location 23.59N90.35E for investigation. Analysis with HOMER requires information on resources, economic constraints, and control methods. It also requires inputs on component types, their numbers, costs, efficiency, longevity, etc. Sensitivity analysis could be done with variables having a range of values instead of a specic number. This allows one to ascertain the effects of change in a certain parameter on the overall system. 4.1 Electrical Load The rst major undertaking within the connes of this study was the collection and analysis of energy consumption data for a typical residential home in Dhaka. This data was needed to get numerical values on the amount of energy consumption in a typical residential home. Data is collected from the monthly electric bill from January, 2008 to December, 2008. Table-1 Month Energy Consumed (KWh/ month) January February 230 250 31 29 Number of days

Fig. 2 Seasonal load data for a year

4.2 Solar Energy Resources

Fig. 3 Average daily radiation and clearness

HOMER introduces the clearness index and average daily radiation from the latitude information of the site under investigation (Fig. 3). Sensitivity analysis is done with three values around the mean, which are: 4.0, 4.5, and 5.0 kW h/m2/d.

4.3 Photovoltaic Array The installation cost of PV arrays may vary from $6.00 to $10.00/W [7]. A 1 kW solar energy systems installation and replacement costs are taken as $5000 and $3000, respectively. Three different sizes are considered, which are 2.5, 3 and 3.5 kW. The lifetime of the PV arrays are taken as 20 years and no tracking system is included in the PV system. 4.4 Battery The batteries are provided backup power in case of power interruption or outage on the grid at night or in a cloudy day. Commercially available models, such as Surrette Battery Engineerings Surrettee-6CS25P models (6 V, 1156 Ah, 9645 kWh) are considered in the scheme. Cost of one battery is $1250 with a replacement cost of $1100. The battery stack may contain a number of batteries (0, 2, 3, 4, 10 or 20). 4.5 Power Converter A power electronic converter is needed to maintain ow of energy between the ac and dc components. For a 1 kW system the installation and replacement costs are taken as $800 and $750, respectively. Three different sizes of converter (3.0, 4.0, 5.0 and 6.0 kW) are taken in the model. Lifetime of a unit is considered to be 15 years with an efciency of 90%. 4.6 Economics and Constraints Considering the project lifetime to be 20 years, the annual real interest rate is taken as 8%. Since operations and maintenance costs are given in the individual components, a nominal value ($100) is taken for this term. Maximum annual capacity shortage is 1% and operating reserve, as percentage of hourly load is 10%. For renewable output, this reserve is 67% for solar energy.

by introducing various alternatives. HOMER eliminates all infeasible combinations and ranks the feasible systems according to increasing net present cost. It also allows a number of parameters to be displayed against the sensitivity variables for identifying an optimal system type.

Fig. 5 Sensitivity results from HOMER

A total of nine sensitivity cases (solar radiation (3), and scaled annual average (3)) were tested with each of the system. In nine cases, the simulation is performed for a total combination of 180 systems. For the scaled annual average load 8kwh/d and solar radiation 5kwh/m2/d, the most economically feasible systems are found and shown in fig. 5. 5.2 Optimized Results In HOMER, the optimization results could be categorized for a particular set of sensitivity parameters. The economically feasible system obtained from the optimized simulation result is shown in fig. 6.

Fig. 6 Optimized results from HOMER

The optimized result contains a PV panel of 2.5KW, 10 batteries for storage and a 3kW converter. The initial capital cost is $28900. The power production from the PV panel is 68% whereas only 32% is purchased from the grid. The excess electricity and unmet load is zero. The generated power by the PV is delivered to load is 53% and 47% is for sell back to the grid.

Fig. 4 HOMER implementation of the on grid solar system

5.

Results

5.1 Sensitivity Results A feasible system is dened as a possible solution, which is capable of meeting the load demand. To keep provisions for nding suitable system type (combination of technologies) and system conguration (size and numbers of each component), the search space is widened

Fig. 7 Monthly average electric production (PV and grid)

6.

Justification of Grid Connected Solar Home System

The initial capital cost for the renewable system is very high. The project life time is 20 years. A part of the initial capital cost is possible to recover from the power sell back to the grid. As 68% of the load demand is possible to meet by the PV generation, only 32% load demand needs to fulfil from the grid. Other than the initial cost, there are some constrains of solar systems. First, PV produces power intermittently because it works only when the sun is shining. This is not a problem for PV systems connected to the utility grid, because any additional electricity required is automatically delivered to the consumer by the utility. In case of off-grid or stand-alone PV systems, batteries can be purchased to store the excess energy for later use. PV-generated electricity is usually more expensive than conventional utility-supplied electricity. Therefore, if the consumer lives near the existing power lines, a solar rebate program and net metering can help to make PV home system more affordable. The customer is billed for the net electricity purchased from the utility over the entire billing period that is, the difference between the electricity coming from the power grid and the electricity generated by the PV system. In more than 35 states, customers who own PV systems can benefit from laws and regulations that require net electric meter reading. Finally, unlike the electricity purchased monthly from a utility, PV power requires a high initial investment. Tax incentives may include a sales tax exemption on the PV system purchase, a property tax exemption, or state personal income-tax credits, all of which provide an economic benefit to consumers by lowering high capital costs.

[3] Bangladesh Energy Crisis: Soul Searching, Energy Bangladesh, June, 2009. [4] Banglapedia (National encyclopaedia of Bangladesh) [5] M. J. Khan, M. T. Iqbal, S. Mahboob A wind Map of Bangladesh Renewable energy 2003; 634-660 [6] Grameen Sakti, URL: http://www.gshakti.org/ [7] M. J. Khan, M. T. Iqbal, Pre-feasibility study of stand-alone hybrid energy systems for applications in Newfoundland Renewable energy 2004; 835-854 [8] HOMER V.2. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), 617 Cole Boulevard, Golden, CO 80401-3393. URL: http://www.nrel.gov/homer/ [9] Photovoltaic systems: a buyers guide. Natural Resources Canada, Renewable and Electrical Energy Division, 580 Booth Street, 17th Floor, Ottawa, Ont. K1A 0E4. ISBN 0-662-31120-5.

7.

Conclusions

At present, the solar home systems are not costcompetitive against conventional fossil fuel based grid interfaced power sources because of the initial capital cost. However, to fulfil the basic need for the consumer and improvements in alternative energy technologies bear good potential for widespread use of such systems. In this paper, the feasibility study is done for a home in Dhaka city. The proposed system feasibility may be a cost issue in respect of Bangladesh; however, it is possible to overcome by introducing some incentives offered by the government and utility companies. It can also be implemented in commercial building, telecommunication sector and water pumping for irrigation.

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank Dr. Tariq Iqbal (Associate Professor, Memorial University of Newfoundland) for his suggestions and help to prepare this paper.

References
[1] International Energy Agency. Share of total primary energy supply in 2003. Technical report, 2003 [2] Press release of The World Bank on October 30, 2008