Optimisation Techniques for Reduction of Enviromental Emissions from the Energy Industry

Abstract With the 2023 United Nations Climate change conference focus on transitioning to clean energy and theme on fast tracking energy transition and cutting emissions before 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5 0C above pre-industrial levels, it has become imperative especially for developing countries requiring more and more energy for their developmental needs to strike a balance between providing basic energy infrastructure for her economic development and the obligation for these developing countries to make commitments, set targets including adjusting national legislation in order to cope with increasing global environmental pressure calling for the reduction of environmental emissions and subsequently build climate resilience. This paper examined the possible optimization techniques for reducing environmental emissions of a typical minigrid power plant by carrying out a technical and economic simulation of an existing 85KW solar based renewable energy minigrid project in Nigeria with the objective of providing the cheapest energy cost along with zero or minimum environmental emissions. HOMER pro software was used for the simulation using Solar PV (PV), Storage Battery (B), Diesel Generator (DG) and Converter as the base case scenario; also, other alternative sources of fuel scenarios were also modelled using Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). The results showed that the Solar PV + BAT + LPG scenario using LPG as an alternative source of fuel reduced the base case scenario C02 emissions by 8% while the Solar PV + BAT + CNG scenario using CNG as an alternative source of fuel reduced the base case scenario C02 emissions by 13.5%. This paper proposes the following optimization techniques for minigrid power projects in Nigeria in order to achieve the least environmental emissions targets by adopting the following; increase in the renewable energy fraction by further adopting any existing local renewable energy resource, switching from higher to lower carbon emitting sources of fuel, use of lower emission generating devices, optimization of the stored battery power and consequently a reduction in the running hours required by the backup power source to support the intermittent renewable energy based minigrids.