A Bottom-Up Approach to PV System Design for Rural Locality Electrification: A Case Study in Burkina Faso

This work evaluates the performance of optimal hybrid PV/battery and PV/diesel generator renewable energy systems for a remote village in Burkina Faso. Based on socioeconomic data and the household sample survey, a technoeconomic simulation and optimization model of electrical loading are presented. Ant colony optimization (ACO) and the loss of power supply probability (LPSP) algorithms were used for the search of the optimal hybrid power system. For the selected village location, the results have shown that the hybrid PV/battery system represents the best renewable energy solution due to abundant solar irradiation and carbon emission free compared to the conventional diesel generator (DG) or PV/DG system. To reach the estimated load power demand of 2150 kWh for the studied location, optimized PV/battery configuration sizing required 650 PV modules of 250 W and 715 batteries of 300 Ah. The economical evaluation reveals a cost investment of about 1,293 025.7 USD for a lifetime of 25 years in comparison of that of PV/DG and DG systems, which are 1,088 701.9 USD and 1,682 850.6 USD, respectively. However, environmental and atmospheric pollution is minimized with a saving of more than 17943 tons of CO2. Therefore, the production of electricity from the PV/battery system leads to better competitiveness reliability for a socioeconomic development of studied remote villages.