#Homer energy legacy generator
#Homer energy legacy software

A small town of Semonkong, located in LesothoвЂ™s Maseru district, is one such rural village that is currently supplied with a hydro-diesel hybrid power system using a village-wide distribution network, which is at least 70В km away from the nearest grid. Hybrid mini-grids are a mature and reliable solution that combines at least two different kinds of technologies for power generation to be used for lighting, communications, water supply or motive power. In such cases, mini-grids based mainly on locally-available renewable resources for decentralized hybrid power systems and household energy solutions become handy in provision of electricity for households and local businesses.

Extension of the grid to such areas is highly costly and often not feasible, at least in the short to medium term. In Lesotho for instance, around 60% of the population, mostly in isolated rural areas, currently do not have access to electricity. It has been estimated that around 600В million people in Sub-Saharan Africa lived without access to electricity at all.

#Homer energy legacy generator

Thus, the diesel generator will always be required to augment power supply for Semonkong especially during the dry and cold winter months of May to September when the energy demand is at its peak but the solar radiation and stream flow are at their lowest. Simulation results for the isolated optimized hydro/wind/PV/diesel/battery hybrid system configuration achieves LCOE of US$0.289/kW at a renewable energy fraction of 0.98. Sensitivity analysis on solar radiation, wind speed, stream flow, diesel price and energy demand is undertaken to evaluate the feasibility of a completely-renewable power system suitable for this remote area application.

#Homer energy legacy software

The HOMER software is used to provide an optimal system configuration in terms of the minimum levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and the maximum renewable energy fraction, based on various renewable and alternative energy sources of solar photovoltaic, wind turbine, mini-hydro turbine, diesel generator and battery storage. The study models, simulates and optimizes the hybrid power system using the load profile of Semonkong town and the available renewable resources data of solar radiation, wind speeds and water flow rates from the nearby Maletsunyane River. This paper proposes a renewable energy hybrid power generation system for one such remote town of Semonkong, in Maseru district, Lesotho. This lack of access to electricity has hampered many social and economic developments due to insufficient provision of much-needed power to homes, schools, police stations, clinics and local businesses. Rugged hills and mountain ranges with sparsely populated rural villages characterize the vast majority of LesothoвЂ™s landscape, making it prohibitively expensive and financially unviable to connect these remote villages to the national electricity grid.