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Renewable energy plays a very important role in the improvement and promotion of environmental sustainability in agricultural-related activities. This paper evaluates the techno-economic and environmental benefits of deploying photovoltaic (PV)- battery systems in a livestock farmhouse. For the energy requirements of the farm to be determined, a walkthrough energy audit is conducted on the farmhouse. The farm selected for this study is located in southern Nigeria. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Hybrid Optimization Modeling for Electric Renewable (HOMER) software was adapted for the purpose of the techno-economic analysis. It is found that a standalone PV/battery-powered system in farmhouse applications has higher economic viability when compared to its diesel-powered counterparts in terms of total net present cost (TNPC). A saving of 48% is achievable over the TNPC and Cost of Energy with zero emissions. The results obtained show the numerous benefits of replacing diesel generators with renewable energy sources such as PV-battery systems in farming applications.

The Automatic Voltage Regulator (AVR) is necessary to keep the terminal voltage of a loaded alternator constant. It is widely used to increase the regulation and stability of synchronous alternators especially in bulk power plants where efficiency and stability is of paramount importance. The AVR is a feedback controller that varies the excitation of the alternator to support a constant output voltage by increasing or decreasing the excitation level of the alternator as the load varies. In this research, the transfer functions of the various stages of the AVR are decided for the purpose of the design of the Voltage Regulator. The performance of the AVR is decided by the basic no load and load test on the alternator. The results show that there was tremendous improvement in the terminal voltage of the alternator with the AVR and a significant drop in the terminal voltage of the alternator without the AVR.