Hybrid renewable energy systems for remote locations

Abstract: Many locations in Indonesia such as small islands and remote villages on the main islands are not connected to the main electricity grid, and may never be as they are too remote for grid extensions to be economically justifiable. Therefore, many either do not have electricity or are dependent on expensive diesel transports to fuel their stand alone, diesel powered mini-grids. Using a hybrid renewable energy system combining solar power and a diesel engine run on vegetable oil could provide this type of location with cheaper, more reliable energy. In order to investigate whether this type of system would be feasible, field studies were completed to gain an understanding of how well implemented systems are working and what challenges are connected to them. The field studies were conducted at the Karimunjawa archipelago, where the energy systems of the main island and three smaller islands were studied. The field studies were complemented by running experiments at the university laboratories to analyze the effect of using vegetable oil as fuel in a diesel engine. The installed solar power was working well on the two islands where it had been implemented recently, whereas another island with an older system had issues with corroding PV-panels. The main island was running on large diesel engines at a newly installed diesel power plant which were not used optimally. Two of the smaller sites also had wind turbines which were all broken. The experiments showed that it was possible to run the diesel engine with palm and coconut oil. The emissions were slightly lower for the vegetable oils, with palm oil have lower emissions that coconut oil. However, the fuel consumption for the vegetable oils was higher than for diesel, with coconut oil giving the highest result.