Distributed Generation to Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions: A Case Study for Residential Sector in Oman

ABSTRACT

The paper presents a case study in Oman to reduce the CO2 emission by diesel-photovoltaic based distributed power system feeding to a house located in remote area. Model of a hybrid power system comprising of a photovoltaic module, along with a diesel generator and essential auxiliary devices is proposed. The actual average solar radiation and residential load data, collected from the meteorological department and local utility office are used in this case study. The simulation results carried out using HOMER software indicate that the proposed hybrid system is attractive to reduce CO2 emission by 38% when compared to the diesel system alone, and by 2.67 % compared to the main interconnected system. The study also includes operational and per unit energy cost estimates. It is seen that the diesel-photovoltaic hybrid system is attractive in terms of operational costs, which is lower by 29.44% compared to the diesel system; while per unit energy cost is 12.08% lower. It may be noted that the cost estimates arrived at for main interconnected system are better in terms of per unit energy cost, which is lower by 8.43 % compared to the proposed hybrid system, while it is not attractive in terms of CO2 emissions.

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