Polygeneration for an off-grid Indian village: Optimization by economic and reliability analysis

Indian power supply is dominated by large coal based power plants connected to the national grid. Though it is economically viable for large consumption in industries but it may not be sustainable for many poor Indian villages, specifically for remote off-grid connection. Decentralized small scale power or even multi utility systems using local resources may be a sustainable option for these villages. Multi-utility energy system, i.e. polygeneration helps to cater to the secondary energy needs of a locality. But the secondary energy supply should be available at affordable cost. Minimization of the cost of secondary energy helps to increase the economic acceptability of a distributed energy system. In this paper, a polygeneration with solar PV, biomass power, ethanol production unit and cooling is proposed for an Indian off grid village. An economic model developed in MATLAB using linear programming approach to determine the optimal size of the system by maximization of the annualized profit has been reported. Results show that multiple energy utility supply is possible through distributed polygeneration. This renewable energy based polygeneration reduce CO2 emission significantly as compared to diesel generator set. Reliability and sensitivity analysis as well as comparison of estimated performance for four different locations in India is reported.