Hybrid Electricity Generation for Village Electrification in Papua New Guinea (PNG) - Case Study
(Room Garuda 9, 1st Floor)
19 Sep 18
4:30 PM
-
6:00 PM
Tracks:
TRACK E - Distributed Energy Resources
In 2014, electricity access was available to ~20% of the total population in PNG. Major contribution to this number was from urban population. Villages in PNG are sparsely located with low population which makes them unattractive for connections the main grid (higher cost and low revenues). Village electrification is defined as the “process by which access to electricity is provided to households or villages located in the isolated or remote areas of a country”. Thus, for electricity access electricity supply infrastructure can even be established locally without connecting to the main grid (off-grid). Such off-grid system can supply rural consumers with electricity generated form available local resources like hydro, solar PV or biomass. To ensure reliability and low cost of generation, fossil fuel generation can be used in tandem (hybrid generation). This paper describes the case study undertaken as part of General Electric’s initiative to study optimum solutions for rural electrification of Papua New Guinea (PNG) where GE Energy Consulting worked to evaluate the various options for electrification of villages. As a first step, peak demand and energy consumption was estimated for Village Centers and Town Starters with consideration of varied types of load like residential, commercial, health clinic, community facilities and water treatment plants with distinct load pattern. In the second step, evaluation of the technology options for meeting the electricity requirement of village centres namely solar PV, micro hydro, Diesel engine, hybrid solutions combining renewable and diesel. This includes dispatch simulations in ‘Homer Pro’ software and computation of levelized cost of electricity for each of the options. Lastly, techno economic assessment was performed for an integrated LNG transportation infrastructure with gas engine solution for a cluster of twenty village centres and four town starters.