Feasibility Study of Hybrid Wind-Solar Stand-Alone Energy System for Remote Regions in Developing Countries: The Case of Post-Soviet Uzbekistan

Abstract

Uzbekistan is an emerging economy in the heart of Central Asia. Due to the country’s diverse geographic and climatic conditions the population is unevenly distributed among its regions. This fact makes some small settlements in remote areas prone to electricity supply disruption, sometimes caused by outdated infrastructure and high transmission losses, which can cause system failures during peaks in power demand. As a result people in such regions become socialy and economically isolated. Given this situation, some remote villages opt to use diesel generators and other fuel alternatives which have a significant environmental footprint. This paper uses the case study of Uzbekistan, as an example of a developing post-Socialist country undergoing an economic transition from planned to market economy to analyse if hybrid wind or solar energy systems are economically viable, compared to diesel run systems. In order to do so authors fed real meteorological data for six selected regions in Uzbekistan into the HOMER software. Further, the authors investigate changes in monetary policy recently taking place in the country and question the consistency of such changes with the course taken towards increasing the share of renewables in power generation. The paper concludes that although renewables appear to be economically viable (even in a fossil-fuel rich country), the government needs to synchronise different policy tools in orderto build an efficient, environmentally friendly and sustainable energy system. Uzbekistan is an emerging economy. Keywords: distributed hybrid energy systems; feasibility study; HOMER; developing country; energy economics;Central Asia.

Connectivity, energy, and transportation in Uzbekistan’s strategy vis-à-vis Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan

“…The most important document that signals the Mirziyoyev administration’s goals, the “Action Strategy on Five Priority Directions for the Development of the Republic of Uzbekistan 2017-2021”, serves as a blueprint for the goals to be achieved in the period of 2017–2021 (UZINFOCOM Action Strategy; Strategy Center 2017 ). While the document is very general in its wording, it designates several areas, such as governance and transparency (by introducing e-governance), for improvement at all levels and singles out transport, energy, industry, and renewable resource development for special attention as the targeted sectors for investment and technological improvement (for these sectors, see Djalilova and Esteban 2018 ).…”