Biomass Stand-Alone System for Power Supply Option to Remote/Isolated Locations

Abstract

Reliability and continuity of electricity supply generated by the use of fossil fuels cannot be guaranteed absolutely because of the present decline in oil and gas. Because of this, it becomes necessary to consider another form of energy generation such as biomass. In this work, the potential of electricity generation for a small household rural/isolated location using combustion technique was done. Due to the availability of sufficient biomass (agricultural waste) in rural/isolated locations, rice husk combustion technique for biopower generation was investigated in this work. The experiment was conducted at Uburu in Ohaozara Local Government Area of Ebonyi State. A 12V permanent magnet DC motor was used as the alternator while rice husk was used as biomass fuel. The biopower was achieved by heating water to steam which was used to turn the turbine attached to the permanent DC motor and a maximum of 155Whr was generated. From the result, it can be seen that the typical load of a household in a rural/isolated location is 55W and the peak experimental power is 154.96W. This peak experimental power is sufficient to carry the household load in a rural/isolated location. The peak experimental energy value is 1549.6Whr in a 10 minutes interval which is far more than the energy demand of 260Whr in a typical household in rural/isolated location. The result shows that biomass can be used to generate power for lighting point and power outlet for small households in rural/isolated locations.