A Study on Optimal Design Feasibility of Microgrid Power System for Rural Electrification: Amhara Region in Ethiopia

Power system is an essential energy domain in recent years which helps to converts non-electrical energy resources, such as hydraulic, thermal, solar, wind and other natural resources to electrical energy. It conveys the generated power to the consumers via transmission and distribution networks. The conventional power system has many problems, which are significant power loss at the transmission and distribution networks, poor power quality and reliability, and ultimately it is not an environmental friendly. These problems are resolved by using a microgrid which will provide electricity to the consumer economically with improved power quality, reliability, and minimum loss by integrating and optimizing different renewable energy sources. The main objective of this research study is to enable the optimal power provision and feasibility to design a microgrid. Based on this objective of Micro grid power system, the study has extended to deliver electricity to satisfy the location of Ethiopia, Bahir Dar Town, specifically the rural electrification as a model for the interior village Abay Mado-Gedro kebele primary school, health post and local communities demand by enhancing the power quality, reliability and minimum transmission / distribution line losses. The microgrid consists of solar, wind and battery storage sources. It is designed to operate in stand-alone mode of operation. Optimum designing and sizing of different components of the microgrid is taken as major contributions of this research work to the study for the Village Gedro as a rural electrification model. Hence it is observed through the analysis and design using HOMER Optimization tool, the total power consumptions for the site of optimal power is 25 kWh / day and 6 kW peak with the consideration of various environmental parameters like solar radiation, temperature and wind speed. Based on the optimal power energy consumption resulted out that the required various power resources are 7 kW Photo-Voltaic (PV), 3 kW Wind turbine, 104 kWh storage battery and 6 kW converter with the total investment cost $ 75993.