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Abstract

One-quarter of the world’s population lives without access to electricity. Unfortunately, the generation technology most commonly employed to advance rural electrification, diesel generation, carries considerable commercial and ecological risks. One approach used to address both the cost and pollution of diesel generation is renewable energy (RE) integration. However, to successfully integrate RE, both the stochastic nature of the RE resource and the operating characteristics of diesel generation require careful consideration. Typically, diesel generation is configured to run heavily loaded, achieving peak efficiencies within 70–80% of rated capacity. Diesel generation is also commonly sized to peak demand. These characteristics serve to constrain the possible RE penetration. While energy storage can relieve the constraint, this adds cost and complexity to the system. This paper identifies an alternative approach, redefining the low load capability of diesel generation. Low load diesel (LLD) allows a diesel engine to operate across its full capacity in support of improved RE utilization. LLD uses existing diesel assets, resulting in a reduced-cost, low-complexity substitute. This paper presents an economic analysis of LLD, with results compared to conventional energy storage applications. The results identify a novel pathway for consumers to transition from low to medium levels of RE penetration, without additional cost or system complexity.

Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Hamilton, JM and Negnevitsky, M and Wang, X
Keywords:	isolated power system, microgrid, off-grid solutions, renewable energy, low load diesel
Journal or Publication Title:	Energies
Publisher:	MDPIAG
ISSN:	1996-1073
DOI / ID Number:	10.3390/en18051080
Copyright Information:	© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Related URLs:	Google Scholar: Negnevitsky, M UTAS Profile: Negnevitsky, M Google Scholar: Wang, X UTAS Profile: Wang, X
Item Statistics:	View statistics for this item

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