Feasibility of Hybrid Retrofits to Off-Grid Diesel Power Plants in the Philippines
The Strategic Power Utilities Group (SPUG) of the National Power Corporation (NPC) in the Philippines owns and operates about 100 power plants, mostly fueled by diesel, ranging in energy production from about 15 kilowatt-hours (kWh)/day to 106,000 kWh/day. Reducing the consumption of diesel fuel in these plants, along with the associated financial losses, is a priority for SPUG. The purpose of this study is to estimate the potential fuel and cost savings that might be achieved by retrofitting hybrid power systems to these existing diesel plants. As used in this report, the term ''hybrid system'' refers to any combination of wind turbine generators (WTGs), photovoltaic (PV) modules, lead-acid batteries, and an AC/DC power converter (either an electronic inverter or a rotary converter), in addition to the existing diesel gensets. The resources available for this study did not permit a detailed design analysis for each of the plants. Instead, the following five-step process was used: (1) Tabulate some important characteristics of all the plants. (2) Group the plants into categories (six classes) with similar characteristics. (3) For each class of system, identify one plant that is representative of the class. (4) For each representative plant, perform a moderately detailed prefeasibility analysis of design options. (5) Summarize and interpret the results. The analysis of each representative plant involved the use of time-series computer simulation models to estimate the fuel usage, maintenance expenses, and cash flow resulting from various designs, and to search the domain of possible designs for the one leading to the lowest life-cycle cost. Cost items that would be unaffected by the retrofit, such as operator salaries and the capital cost of existing equipment, were not included in the analysis. Thus, the results are reported as levelized cost of energy (COE) savings: the difference between the cost of the existing diesel-only system and that of an optimized hybrid system, expressed in units of U.S. dollars per kWh (US$/kWh) of energy production. This analysis is one phase of a study entitled ''Analysis of Renewable Energy Retrofit Options to Existing Diesel Mini-Grids,'' funded by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and performed jointly by NPC, the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Sustainable Energy Solutions in New York, New York (Morris et al. 1998). A more detailed version of this paper is included in that report.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Lab., Golden, CO. (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC36-99-GO10337
- OSTI ID:
- 15000461
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/CP-500-26927; TRN: US200325%%276
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Prepared for Windpower '99, Burlington, VT (US), 06/20/1999--06/23/1999; Other Information: PBD: 1 Aug 1999
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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17 WIND ENERGY
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION
25 ENERGY STORAGE
33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS
CAPITALIZED COST
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DIESEL FUELS
HYBRID SYSTEMS
LEAD-ACID BATTERIES
LIFE-CYCLE COST
NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY
NEW YORK
PHILIPPINES
POWER PLANTS
POWER SYSTEMS
WIND TURBINES
WIND ENERGY
SOLAR ENERGY
PETROLEUM
POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION