Feasibility Study of Solar-Wind Hybrid Power System for Rural Electrification at the Estatuene Locality in Mozambique

Abstract: This project work focuses on the feasibility study of a hybrid PV-Wind System for rural electrification at the Estatuene Locality in southern Mozambique. This is in line with electricity network expansion, which, in Mozambique shows high implementation cost and low operation cost. Through field research, an analysis was made of the actual electrical demand in the Estatuene rural community. The wind data was collected from the installed weather stations in the region while the solar data were extracted internally from the HOMER software by introducing the site coordinates. All the configurations, simulations and selection of hybrid systems were also made using HOMER. For the Estatuene rural community it was estimated a scaled annual average demand of 9.4 kWh/day with a peak load of 1.4 kW for DC charge; and a total scaled annual average of 133 kWh/day with a peak load of 15.3 kW for AC Charge. The annual mean solar potential is 5.205 kWh/m2/d, and the mean wind speed is 4.84 m/s for 12 meters above the ground. Thus the calculations and the selection of the best configuration of the hybrid system were crossed out with the technical specifications and costs of photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, power converter, batteries, and the electricity network, specifically for the comparison between an optimum hybrid system solution and two separate ones. The calculations presented an analysis of the technical and the financial viability of the selected hybrid system for local electric power production.