An open-source optimization tool for solar home systems: A case study in Namibia

Abstract

Solar home systems (SHSs) represent a viable technical solution for providing electricity to households and improving standard of living conditions in areas not reached by the national grid or local grids. For this reason, several rural electrification programmes in developing countries, including Namibia, have been relying on SHSs to electrify rural off-grid communities. However, the limited technical know-how of service providers, often resulting in over-or under-sized SHSs, is an issue that has to be solved to avoid dissatisfaction of SHSs´ users. The solution presented here is to develop an open-source software that service providers can use to optimally design SHSs components based on the specific electricity requirements of the end-user. The aim of this study is to develop and validate an optimization model written in MS Excel-VBA which calculates the optimal SHSs components capacities guaranteeing the minimum costs and the maximum system reliability. The results obtained with the developed tool showed good agreement with a commercial software and a computational code used in research activities. When applying the developed optimization tool to existing systems, the results identified that several components were incorrectly sized. The tool has thus the potentials of improving future SHSs installations, contributing to increasing satisfaction of end-users.

Optimum Sizing and Economic Assessment of Hybrid Microgrid for Domestic Load Under Various Scenario

“…The author in [6] investigated that the unit cost of electricity produced by a stand-alone solar system for household electrification is lower than conventional electricity supply in Faisalabad, Pakistan. Campana et al [7] emphases the need for optimum sizing of SHS for the satisfaction of the users and improving the standard of living in developing countries. An investigation conducted on grid-connected solar PV system for various residential consumption and feed-in tariffs along with the time of day system for a net metering infrastructure at New Delhi, India [8].…”

Solar Home Systems: A comprehensive literature review for Sub-Saharan Africa

“…This includes understanding how the battery is affected by constant deep discharging when systems are used to their limits (Tillmans & Schweizer-Ries, 2011). This is crucial for choosing the right battery capacity and avoiding the incorrect sizing of various components (Campana et al, 2016;Monyei, Adewumi, & Jenkins, 2018;Narayan et al, 2018). Many households will still overuse their SHS, although measures, such as an external battery state of charge display and appropriate training could reduce the amount of power cuts (Gustavsson, 2007b).…”

Potential of unsubsidized distributed solar PV to replace coal-fired power plants, and profits classification in Chinese cities

“…The latitude of the location as the optimal tilt angle is used [34]. The system specifications are assumed based on the current literature: 98% inverter efficiency at rated power [35], 2% soiling losses [36], 90% Balance-of-System efficiency [37], 10% ground reflectance [38], 17.1% PV module efficiency [39], and 0.3%/year PV module ageing factor [40]. The latitude and longitude data of 344 cities were extracted from Google Maps.…”