Simplification of Voltage and Frequency Control of a Small-Scale Hydropower System Akinola Sunday Oladeji, Samuel Dwado Nahum IEEE International Conference on Emerging and Sustainable Technologies for Power and ICT in A Developing Society Nigercon, 2024 Pico-hydro power systems are stand-alone and generally built to generate electricity for off-grid rural communities. Yet, this system requires an advanced mechanism or system to control the variation of water flow rate due to seasonal changes and patterns of the user's load profile. These variations will result in inconsistent output voltage and frequency from the electrical generator. Different approaches have been proposed to tackle this issue by controlling the electrical power output and water flow rate via electronic load controller; dump loads; power converters; and mechanical regulation of turbine water flow rate. To harvest maximum output power and minimize the power wastage, and overall cost for a pico-hydropower system, a practical approach that eliminates the use of costly dump load and uses a variable frequency drive (VFD) inverter and the power transformer is proposed for the control of voltage and frequency.
Optimal Sizing and Techno-economic Analysis of an Off-grid Solar Photovoltaic System for Rural Electrification O. F. Atilola, M. F. Akorede, G. A. Olarinoye, A. S. Oladeji 2022 IEEE Pes IAS Powerafrica Powerafrica 2022, 2022 The economics of generating electricity is becoming a great challenge to the developing countries, thereby making electricity difficult to be assessed in rural areas that are completely off-grid. For this reason, there is a need to extend electricity to these rural areas by exploring the available renewable energy source in Nigeria. This work was carried out using a remote community in Nigeria as a case study. The electrical load survey of the community was carried out to determine the load demand of the area. The value of S4.6 kWh was obtained as the daily load demand considering the future expansion that will be included in the nearest future, hence the load curve was determined. This work also considered the modelling and optimization of the system components prior to the economic analysis of the project. The BAT algorithm was used as an optimization tool to determine the number of PV modules, battery banks and the capacity of the inverter to be used. At different scenarios, the number of the components varied with the days of autonomy of the energy storage system and PV power rating. The Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) was determined to be 0.5034 ${\\$}$/kWh. Finally, the results were validated against the HOMER software.
Technical Losses Computation of a Typical Nigerian Radial Distribution Feeder using the Forward/Backward Sweep Approach Mudathir Funsho Akorede, Oladimeji Ibrahim, Abdulrahaman Okino Otuoze, Akinola Sunday Oladeji, Ahmad Opeyemi Zubair, Muhydeen Oluwafemi Tijani Proceedings of the 2022 IEEE Nigeria 4th International Conference on Disruptive Technologies for Sustainable Development Nigercon 2022, 2022 Aggregate Technical, Commercial and Collection (ATC&C) losses in power networks occur due to technical and commercial reasons. These losses not only reduce the system efficiency, but also increase the operational costs of the power distribution companies. To effectively minimize the ATC&C losses, power utilities must first be able to quantify the technical losses (TL) arising from the current flowing through the network elements. This study employs the forward/backward sweep power flow approach to calculate the TL. In the work, a real-life 11 kV radial distribution feeder is used as a case study to evaluate the performance of the algorithm. Two loading scenarios are considered in the study and results of the algorithm, developed in MATLAB, are presented. Numerical results obtained on the case study feeder reveal that the TL is a function of the loading of the network. The feeder when loaded to 65% of capacity recorded a total power losses of 2.4096 MW, which is equivalent to 18.5% of the injected power. On the other hand, the feeder total losses increase to 7.1112 MW, equivalent to 40% of the feeder capacity, when loaded to 90% of its capacity. The two cases result in several bus voltages falling below the lower permissible limit of 0.94 p.u., which is a clear indication that the feeder under study requires a compensation.
Simulation-based optimization of hybrid renewable energy system for off-grid rural electrification Akinola Sunday Oladeji, Mudathir Funsho Akorede, Salihu Aliyu, Abdulrasaq Apalando Mohammed, Adebayo Wahab Salami International Journal of Renewable Energy Development, 2021 There is a need to develop an optimization tool that can be applied in the feasibility study of a hybrid renewable energy system to find the optimal capacity of different renewable energy resources and support the decision makers in their performance investigation. A multi-objective function which minimizes the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) and Loss of Load Probability Index (LLPI) but maximizes the novel Energy Match Ratio (EMR) was formulated. Simulation-based optimization method combined with ε-constraint technique was developed to solve the multi-objective optimization problem. In the study, ten-year hourly electrical load demand, using the end-use model, is estimated for the communities. The performance of the developed algorithm was evaluated and validated using Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables (HOMER®) optimization software. The developed algorithm minimized the LCOE by 6.27% and LLPI by 167% when compared with the values of LCOE ($0.444/kWh) and LLPI (0.000880) obtained from the HOMER® optimization tool. Also, the LCOE with the proposed approach was calculated at $0.417/kWh, which is lower than the $0.444/kWh obtained from HOMER®. From environmental perspective, it is found that while 141,370.66 kg of CO2 is saved in the base year, 183,206.51 kg of CO2 is saved in the ninth year.The study concluded that the approach is computationally efficient and performed better than HOMER® for this particular problem.The proposed approach could be adopted for carrying out feasibility studies and design of HRES for Off-Grid electrification, especially in the rural areas where access to the grid electricity is limited
Assessment of Solar and Hydropower Energy Potentials of Three Rural Communities in Nigeria A.S. Oladeji, M. F. Akorede IEEE Pes IAS Powerafrica Conference Power Economics and Energy Innovation in Africa Powerafrica 2019, 2019 Prior to planning a renewable energy project, it is essential to first determine the abundance of the renewable energy resources available at the site of interest. Equally important is the information of the present and future electrical energy demand of the community to serve. This paper presents a resource assessment for hydropower and solar energy production in a cluster of three off-grid rural communities in Nigeria. A hydrological gauge is installed along the available river section to measure the water level for a period of one year, and water velocity with Flow Probe. The average daily solar irradiance of 265 W/m2 is obtained from a seven-year data collected from the Nigerian Meteorological Agency for the site. With a projection of a total annual energy demand of 176.7 MWh in the first year and 229 MWh in the tenth year, the annual energy generation from the hydropower is estimated at 2,624 MWh with a capacity factor of 0.83. Meanwhile, a solar panel of 300 W capacity is estimated to produce 442.36 kWh annually. Conveniently, the production from the two energy sources is more than adequate for the communities.
