Microgrid sizing for rural electrification in Nigeria

Abstract

The results obtained from electricity demand studies mostly point to the fact that the current gap between supply and demand in
developing countries is already very substantial and that, it will become more entrenched under a ‘business as usual’ scenario.
It’s hard to run a business or a home without power, and those lucky few who are connected to a grid usually find electricity
erratic and unpredictable. As a result, Africans self-generate a significant portion of their electricity with highly polluting off-grid
alternatives and at a cost that is more than twice the cost of grid-based power. In Africa where most of the countries have
extremely low electrification rates, microgrids have been set up to try and bring electricity to people living in villages. With
distributed generation comes several issues like power quality assurance (from the several generating stations), balancing energy
demand and supply, security, smart metering for tariff management, etc. In this paper, a microgrid sizing for rural electrification
in developing countries is done. The methodology employed in this work involved the characterization of the test bed, sizing of
the test bed, and data collection from the test bed to enable the efficient design of the microgrid. The procedures employed in this
work showed that it helps to eliminate the problem of over sizing, energy wastage, reduce cost of the battery storage, improve
batteries depth of discharge and energy charge cycle of the battery bank. This is because this research work employed real time
field measurements of the testbed, and also captured the solar data readings unique to the region of usage.