Technoeconomic Analysis on a Hybrid Power System for the UK Household Using Renewable Energy: A Case Study

The United Kingdom has abundant renewable energy resources from wind, solar, biomass and others. Meanwhile, domestic sector consumes large amount of electricity and natural gas. This paper aims to explore the potentials of a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) to supply power and heat for a household with the optimal configuration. A typical house in the United Kingdom is selected as a case study and its energy consumption is collected and analysed. Based on energy demands of the house, a distributed HRES including wind turbine, solar photovoltaic (PV) and biogas genset is designed and simulated to satisfy the power and heat demands. Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) Software is used to conduct this technoeconomic analysis. It is found that the HRES system with one 1-kW wind turbine, one 1-kW sized biogas genset, four battery units and one 1-kW sized power converter is the most feasible solution, which can supply enough power and heat to meet the household demands. In addition, the HRES system has the lowest net present cost (NPC) of $14,507 and the lowest levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of$0.588 kW−1·h−1. The case study is also quite insightful to other European countries

Technoeconomic Analysis on a Hybrid Power System for the UK Household Using Renewable Energy: A Case Study

The United Kingdom has abundant renewable energy resources from wind, solar, biomass and others. Meanwhile, domestic sector consumes large amount of electricity and natural gas. This paper aims to explore the potentials of a hybrid renewable energy system (HRES) to supply power and heat for a household with the optimal configuration. A typical house in the United Kingdom is selected as a case study and its energy consumption is collected and analysed. Based on energy demands of the house, a distributed HRES including wind turbine, solar photovoltaic (PV) and biogas genset is designed and simulated to satisfy the power and heat demands. Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewable (HOMER) Software is used to conduct this technoeconomic analysis. It is found that the HRES system with one 1-kW wind turbine, one 1-kW sized biogas genset, four battery units and one 1-kW sized power converter is the most feasible solution, which can supply enough power and heat to meet the household demands. In addition, the HRES system has the lowest net present cost (NPC) of $14,507 and the lowest levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of$0.588 kW−1·h−1. The case study is also quite insightful to other European countries

Optimal Hybrid Power System Using Renewables and Hydrogen for an Isolated Island in the UK

A distributed electrical power system using renewable generations (RG) on an island was studied. The original system includes micro hydropower stations, wind turbines and solar PVs with a bank of batteries for storage of the extra power from the renewables; and two diesel generators were used as the back-up units. From the analysis of historic electricity generation and consumption data, it was found that the RG alone could not meet the total demand and the diesel generator(s) needed running occasionally in 8 months in one year. In order to make the electric power supply completely from renewables, one novel solution using hydrogen generated from extra renewable electricity to replace diesel as the fuel for the diesel generators was proposed, i.e. a sub-system of renewable hydrogen generation (RHG), which composed of extra wind turbines, a water electrolyser and a hydrogen storage tank, were added to the renewable system. A technical and economic performance evaluation of the RG system was carried out using HOMER software. The results showed that the RHG sub-system produced and stored enough hydrogen for the diesel generator(s) to generate electricity whenever needed. In this way, the power supply on the island will be completely from renewables and zero CO2 emission without using diesel. The cost of electricity (COE) of the new system was £0.776 per kilowatt hour

Simulation Study of an ORC System Driven by the Waste Heat Recovered from a Trigeneration System

Trigeneration produces power, heat and cooling simultaneously. It utilises the waste heat from generator for heating and generating cooling. From previous studies, it is found that some part of the waste heat recovered by the trigeneration is not being used when it is in operation. It is therefore necessary to find a way to utilise the heat. Integrating an ORC (organic Rankine cycle) system into a micro trigeneration system is studied. The waste heat recovered by the trigeneration system is utilised by the ORC system to generate electrical power. An ORC model is set up in Matlab and a micro trigeneration system based a diesel engine generator in the laboratory at Newcastle University is used as the case study. R245fa is used as the working fluid. The result showed that the ORC system may generate 0.737 kW electrical power with 9.25% efficiency at the generator full-load operation point