Synergy of small-scale wind energy system with energy efficient appliances and reticulation system

The environmental impact of electrical energy production causing climate change phenomena such as global warming, drought, famine, extreme change in weather pattern is visible around the world. The negative impact is generally attributed to the burning of fossil fuels (solid-, gas- and liquid-fuels). Humankind over-reliance on these natural resources has greatly depleted these resources as a result pushing the price higher and creating energy security problems for countries not endowed with these natural resources. Renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, biofuel, geothermal, and biomass are used to mitigate the effects of excessive fossil fuels combustion as a primary energy source to produce electricity. Wind energy resource can be harnessed to provide or supplement the electricity need of domestic electricity users located very far from the utility grid where economics of grid extension is not economically viable. Main constraint in deploying renewable energy system especially for small-scale electricity users is the initial high capital that is needed pushing up the levelised cost of electricity and extending the payback periods. Optimisation of the system configuration design, available renewable resource usage and efficient use of the electricity generated is considered in this paper as solution providing better cost effective system. A wind regime of a remote area is correlated with the wind turbine used to carry out the analysis in this paper. Homer software as a modelling and simulation tool is used to evaluate the economic and technical feasibility of an optimised standalone wind energy system that can fully supply electricity need of a remote household making use of energy efficient appliances. Parameter sensitivity analysis of most stochastic variables in the electric wind energy power system designed is carried out.