Feasibility Studies for a Biogas Powered Standalone Power Plant: A Case Study of Giwa Community, Kaduna State, Nigeria

Abstract

In this research work, a feasibility survey was conducted to determine the possibility of establishing a standalone power plant powered by biogas obtained from anaerobic digestion of three (3) agricultural residues for the Giwa community. These agricultural residues are chicken dropping, kitchen residues and cow dung with kitchen agricultural residue having the highest yield rate of 0.33 m 3/kg. However, due to the limitation in the gathering of kitchen agricultural residue, its percentage was limited to 20% while the remaining 80% was shared among the two (2) other agricultural residues, with cow dung having a yield rate of 0.05 m 3/kg and chicken droppings with 0.2 m 3/kg. In order to determine the capacity of the plant, the power consumption of the community was estimated using stratified sampling method while the same method was used to determine the number of cows and chicken in the study area. Expected power consumption of 10,320 KW was estimated using stratified sampling method while biogas that was obtainable from the study area was estimated as 78,210.926 m3as against the required volume of 64,512 m3. Finally, from the result of financial modulation done during the feasibility studies, a grand total of N 959,742,167.77 is required as the setup cost, while the plant will require N 110,871.67 as running cost daily with a daily income of N 1,238,400 at an energy sales price of N 5.01 Thus, the company is expected to make a daily profit of N 789,269.83 after tax which will allow the investment made on the plant be recoverable within a debt period (debt term) of about 3 years and 5 months at a full degree of freedom.