Techno-Economic Evaluation of Hybrid Supply System for Sustainable Powering the Saint Martin Island in Bangladesh

Abstract

With the progression of new technology, renewable energy (RE) based supply systems are becoming popular day by day. The main concern of this work is to examine the viability of renewable energy-oriented hybrid systems for powering the Saint Martin Island, the southern area of Bangladesh. This work proposed a hybrid solar PV/wind turbine (WT) arrangement to provide a way out to the power crisis of off-grid Saint Martin Island with optimizing hybrid power generation schemes focused on the locally obtainable renewable resources. The techno-economic feasibility of the hybrid solar PV/WT system along with back supply such as diesel generator (DG) and battery bank (BB) has been critically analyzed using the HOMER optimization software with genuine climate statistics and nominal load profile under the condition of summer and winter seasons. Simulation results find that the RE focused supply system technically feasible and includes a minimum amount of total net present cost (TNPC) along with the lower value of per unit electricity generation cost. Moreover, the amount of released gas for the RE focused supply system is far less than the gas released if the total electrical load was supplied by only diesel generators. Finally, the hybrid solar PV/WT system along with backup supply is a realistic solution which includes the initial cost of 89,620 $, the replacement cost of $ 59,791, operating cost of 22,701 $/year, TNPC of 250,919 $ and electricity generation cost of 0.206 $/kWh.