Environmental Impacts of Solar Pv Integration Into Existing Diesel Mini-grid.

Abstract

Environmental Impacts of Solar PV Integration into Existing Diesel Mini-grid Renewable Energy (RE) is traditionally considered to be clean and free. However, in these last decades, RE related issues are becoming more and more significant and involves the rational use of RE resource and the related environmental impact due to the emission of pollutants. Therefore, there is pressing need for developing RE Technologies (RET), especially solar photovoltaic (PV) to cope with the challenges of energy shortage and environmental degradation. Integration of solar PV into existing Diesel (D) mini grid has both positive and negative environmental effects. The claim that RE is clean need to be verified during utilization, and thus, the net environmental impacts need to be quantified. In this thesis, environmental effects of D-PV hybrid deployment were reviewed and then the emissions evaluated using HOMER software. Health and Ecosystems effects were further analyzed using Modified Recipe Model of the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). A case study of Lodwar Town in Turkana County Kenya was used. Simulated results reveal that deployment of hybrid Diesel-PV (D-PV) enables 77% decrease in net emission levels at 60% PV penetration which is the optimal scenario. Use of pure PV reduces net health effects (H) by 32% while D-PV when applied optimally results in 88% decrease. When a pure PV system was simulated, the average ecosystem effects became 73% while for the hybrid system, such effect are 88%. Thus, the hybrid D-PV system is preferred in reducing environmental effects.