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An economic and environment friendly solution for the rural households' energy crisis in Egypt

مؤلف البحث
Fahd Diab, Salwa Ali
المشارك في البحث
سنة البحث
2016
مجلة البحث
Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy
الناشر
AIP
عدد البحث
8
تصنيف البحث
1
صفحات البحث
045904-1:045904-18
موقع البحث
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4955112
ملخص البحث

The demand for the electrical energy increased drastically due to the exponential growth of the world population. In the last decade, owing to environmental issues and decay of non-renewable energy resources, the development of power generation from the hydrokinetic energy has grown considerably. Many individuals and companies are looking at the hydrokinetic power as the better solution to the prevailing energy crisis. However, there is paucity of published literature that shedding the light on the economic and environmental sides of the hydrokinetic turbines (HKT) in the hybrid renewable energy systems (HRES). The prime objective of this study is to provide an economic and environmental assessment of a HKT in combination with other renewable energy resources for cost-effective, reliable, and sustainable electrical energy supply for the rural households in Naga Hammadi, Egypt, where adequate water resources are available from the Nile River. The HKT is simulated together with photovoltaic (PV), diesel generator (DG) and battery (B) using the well-known HOMER software to optimize the HRES. The net present cost (NPC) of the optimum HRES is $12.7 million with minimal cost of energy (COE) of $0.158/kWh. The optimum system is capable of saving approximately $9.7 million during the project lifetime (25 years) in the form of NPC as compared to the diesel generator system. In addition, the system is capable of saving 28.971 million liters of fuel with cost of $5.11 million during the project lifetime. Finally, it is concluded that the hybrid PV/HKT/DG/B is the more economic and environment friendly system as compared to other systems configurations especially the diesel generator system, because it is able to reduce 76.29 million kg of the amount of CO2 emissions during the project lifetime.