Hybrid PV/Wind/Diesel Based Distributed Generation for an Off-Grid Rural Village in Afghanistan

Afghanistan has a tremendous resource potential of renewable energy especially solar and the wind. Therefore, utilization of these resources has a special rule for the remote areas where access to the electrical grid or secure power supply is a dream for most of the people. This paper presents a feasibility and usefulness of hybrid power generation based on PV/wind/diesel generator for an off-grid rural village that feeds the load at a rate of average 7.9 kWh/day with 1.32 kW peak load. GsT (geospatial toolkit) is used to obtain the solar and wind data of the site. Windographer software is used to analyze the wind resource data of the site. HOMER Pro software package is used to select the suitable and reliable hybrid generation system and calculate the optimal capacities and costs of the components. Through the study, it is found that this state of the art adaptation could provide vast opportunities for off-grid rural communities such as in Afghanistan where enough high penetration of renewable energy is available.

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