Development of Techno-Economic Modelling tool for Solar for quantifying their Environmental Impacts o

Abstract

Global attention has always focused on pollution and depletion of fossil fuels associated with the conventional energy sources while the non-conventional energy/renewable energy sources have always been considered clean and environmentally friendly. Renewable energy technologies (RETs) has a great potential in providing energy with sustainability to the wide populations especially in the poor countries of the African continent where grid access is impractical because of the sparse population and the existence of the rugged terrain. Paradoxically, despite being branded economically viable and clean, RETs have not been able to realize their full potential in many parts of the world especially in the African continent. The slow deployment of RETs across the globe such as wind and solar is associated with some environmental impacts such as use of large tracts of land which would otherwise be used for other economic activities for revenue generation such as agriculture, archaeological sites, forests etc. Models previously developed for technical and economic analysis of RETs such as HOMER, HYBRID2 and HOGA are able to give valuable insights but their limitations and inconsistencies fail to achieve a complete mathematical model that fully encapsulates and quantifies the environmental impacts of RETs with their significant uncertainty. The primary contribution of this paper is the development of a decision-making tool based on probabilistic modelling approach which permits for quantification of environmental impacts of RETs in order to evaluate the indirect cost while generating energy from them. Keywords—Homer, Environmental impacts, LCOE, RETs