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In a modest electrical energy sector, an economical unit cost of electricity generation is inevitable. For tropical countries like Malaysia, apart from attractive energy cost, the environmental issues due to electricity sector also play a significant role because of its tropical nature. The energy cost and its related environmental concerns are of the momentous issues of the Malaysian Government. So as to resolve the concerned issues, this research presents a direct generation scheduling strategy to match demand against power generation, to augment opportunity for energy sustainability, and to offer an attractive unit electric energy cost. Besides, the same strategy aims at minimizing emissions due to thermal power plants through generation scheduling and incorporation of renewable energy systems.

Though Malaysia is blessed with a lot of natural resources, still it mainly depends on fossil-fuels for electricity generation. Due to this dependency, among the different polluting agencies, the electric power sector ranks second in the country's statistics. So as to reduce the pollution from them and to reduce the dependency on the depleting fossil-fuels, Malaysia is very keen on promoting renewable energy based electricity generation. Following the Government's renewable energy policy and subsidies, several renewable energy attempts were made and only the solar PV energy systems have had a good start; however, the continued development from the start is questionable because of the high capital cost involved and the unattractive energy conversion efficiency. Few attempts on the proven, cost-effective wind energy systems were carried out and the net outcome is not encouraging due to the low-speed scenario in Malaysia. As per a few successful studies on wind speed assessments, there are attractive sites for wind turbine based electricity generation not with high speed higher capacity turbines, but at low speed small capacity wind turbines. To promote wind energy in Malaysia and to attract global investors, this research aims at low capacity wind turbines suitable for low wind regimes as in the Malaysian context. The proposed constant speed-small horizontal axis wind turbines exhibited encouraging values of annual energy production, power coefficient and capacity factors promising a successful start of wind energy in Malaysia.

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Recognizing the importance of electricity as a driver of rapid economic growth and poverty alleviation, India aims to provide access to all households by 2030. Despite the best efforts of state and federal governments to meet consumers’ electrical needs, budget constraints, inefficient operations and massive loan burdens have hampered their efforts. Aside from these concerns, rural India, which accounts for 65% of the population, is plagued by a slew of issues, including low electricity demand, a low load factor and the expectation of cheap electricity. These concerns bind the authorities’ hands, preventing them from moving forward. As a result, this project aims to model an autonomous microgrid system that integrates three potential renewable-energy systems, namely wind, sun and hydrokinetic, to provide electricity for a remote society. It starts with assessing the region’s electricity needs with its inhabitants. The HOMER Pro platform creates a cost-effective microgrid based on the demand estimate. The components of the microgrid include 6.4-kW small wind turbine (SWT) groups, 4.4-kW solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, a 5-kW hydrokinetic water turbine, battery storage and a converter. The project is unique in that it considers site-specific initial capital costs, replacement costs, and operation and maintenance costs of the renewable-energy systems, and it does not include any environmentally hazardous energy system. The successful optimization results in terms of levelized energy costs are $0.0538, $0.0614 and $0.0427/kWh for wind, solar and hydrokinetic components, respectively, without any environmental issues.