Distributed Generation to Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions: A Case Study for Residential Sector in Oman~!2009-11-03~!2010-03-13~!2010-06-09~!

The paper presents a case study in Oman to reduce the CO2 emission by diesel-photovoltaic based distributed power system feeding to a house located in remote area. Model of a hybrid power system comprising of a photovoltaic module, along with a diesel generator and essential auxiliary devices is proposed. The actual average solar radiation and residential load data, collected from the meteorological department and local utility office are used in this case study. The simulation results carried out using HOMER software indicate that the proposed hybrid system is attractive to reduce CO2 emission by 38% when compared to the diesel system alone, and by 2.67 % compared to the main interconnected system. The study also includes operational and per unit energy cost estimates. It is seen that the diesel-photovoltaic hybrid system is attractive in terms of operational costs, which is lower by 29.44% compared to the diesel system; while per unit energy cost is 12.08% lower. It may be noted that the cost estimates arrived at for main interconnected system are better in terms of per unit energy cost, which is lower by 8.43 % compared to the proposed hybrid system, while it is not attractive in terms of CO2 emissions. The Kyoto Protocol provides various mechanisms like joint implementation, clean development mechanism and international emission trading that enable countries to acquire GHG reduction credits. The evaluation and deployment of carbon credit is a key component to mitigate the growth in concentration of GHG. Prabhakant and Tiwari (2) have carried out an analysis to determine the carbon credits earned using standalone solar PV system which is encouraging and cost effective than conventional power generation. The other viable option to curb the carbon emission is substantial use of renewable energy along with the conventional resources. The paper presents a case study to reduce the GHG by proposing a Diesel-Photovoltaic Hybrid System (D-PVHS) feeding to a house located in remote area. The reminder of this paper is organised as follows. Second section presents the historical data of CO2 emission and daily residential power demand. Section III estimates the emission factor and energy cost of Main Interconnected System (MIS) feeding to the residential sector. Section IV describes the potential of renewable energy in the Oman. The model development is described in Section V. The application of this case study is explained in section VI. Results and discussion are described in section VII while conclusions of the study are presented in section VIII.