Techno-Economic Assessment of Grid Connected Solar PV/Wind hybrid System

Abstract

Wind and Solar PV energy as alternative energy supplies to the traditional fossil fuel have been a subject of study for researchers at various fora including climate change summits. However, the technical and economic feasibility of wind and solar projects involve a lot of complexity and depends mostly on geographical location and availability of resources. To address the constraints and factors affecting wind and solar PV systems, this paper aims to undertake a techno-economic feasibility assessment of a grid connected solar PV/Wind hybrid system capable of meeting a typical commercial load, located in Kumasi, Ghana. To achieve the purpose of this study an energy audit has been undertaken to establish the load demand of the facility. Again, RETSCREEN software was used to design and simulate the proposed hybrid system in order to analyse the technical, economic and environmental implications of the system. Findings show that, there is a high potential for providing commercial scale energy consumption in most months in the year, and there is extra energy available to be sold to the grid, generating considerable income. Though the system has a high levelized cost of energy (LCOE) as compared to the existing grid tariff, the study adds significantly to the national objective to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels while meeting local energy requirement.